I know that the conventional wisdom on the right is that it’s not good enough if only the Syrian troops leave.
I understand that the Syrian secret police, the Mukhabarat, are deeply embedded in Lebanon and the Lebanese won’t free until they’re gone. Bush and Rice have been good about keeping this issue alive. And I agree with people who know more about these things when they say we must insist the Mukhabarat must go. What other position is there, really? Even if it’s only at the superficial level of starting position for an eventual negotiated compromise, it would be absurd to have any other position at this stage. To say they could stay would undermine our moral authority and concede that we think Lebanon can never truly be free. Much as Michael Ledeen often argues about Iran (and elsewhere) accomodating the terror regimes only conveys a sense of permanence to their rule.
Still, I’m a bit dubious that we have to make sure, ourselves, that the Mukhabarat leaves Lebanon. I’ve been thinking for a while that if Syria’s troops leave, the predicament of the secret police would be untenable — for the secret police. The Lebanese backlash against foreign interlopers would be huge, and without the protection of their troops it’s easy to imagine a “Syrian scare” type frenzy which would spell very bad news for the Syrians left behind. In fact, I doubt the secret police are as secret as people say. My guess is that most Lebanese know who the bad guys in their midst are the same way it wasn’t that hard to tell who was KGB in various Soviet satellites. Once, the troops are gone, they can find these guys very quickly.
Anyway, I found a small bit of corroboration at the end of a piece about the Mukhabarat in the Times of London:
Chibli Mallat, Professor of International Law at St Joseph University in Beirut, said that the Syrian intelligence network could not survive in its current shape. “I don’t think that, frankly, these people are capable of staying without the larger military apparatus that provides them cover,” he said.