COLUMN RIGHT : Don’t Waste Diplomacy on Arab States : Lebanon, now Syria’s puppet, typifies the Middle East’s political blood lust.

Most people in the West would like to see Saddam Hussein removed from power and put on trial as a mass murderer. But this will not solve the problem of Iraq, either for us or for the Iraqis.

Dictators like Hussein achieve their astonishing concentration of power through a “party of the new type,” as Lenin described it: an organization of systematic terror, able to exert its control over the whole of society, without respect for morality or law. To remove Hussein without also destroying the Baath party would be like removing Hitler while leaving the Nazis in charge.

Unfortunately, the Baath party rules also in Syria, whose president, Hafez Assad, is every bit as ruthless as Saddam Hussein. Notwithstanding the Syrian regime’s long record of terrorism at home and abroad, the U.S. government has chosen to cultivate Assad, making the same mistake in his regard as it formerly made over Saddam Hussein. Indeed, the United States has encouraged Syria to do to Lebanon what Iraq was forbidden to do to Kuwait. One tyrant’s loss has been another tyrant’s gain.

This kowtowing to Assad is all the more reprehensible in that it involves the betrayal of our only true ally among the Arabs. For all its faults, Lebanon achieved what no other Arab country before or since has achieved: an elected government, whose president and ministers gained and lost office without the help of bullets. Throughout the years of pan-Arabist lunacy, Lebanon remained largely faithful to Western interests and Western values. Until the early 1970s, when the Syrians and Palestinians began to destabilize the country, it was the only Arab state with a free press, an independent judiciary and a rule of law.

Lebanese Muslims are as proud of this achievement as are their Christian compatriots. But it is to Christianity, with its belief in a separation between the political and the religious spheres, that the achievement is due.

There can be no lasting settlement in the Middle East until we consider all just grievances: not only that of the Palestinians, but also those of the Kurds against their Iraqi oppressors, of the Syrian people against the Baath party and its repulsive leader, and (more important than any other) that of the Lebanese against the Syrians who have occupied and terrorized their country. I doubt, however, that an international conference will do anything to advance the cause of peace. For who would attend it? The Palestine Liberation Organization has now effectively ruled itself out of consideration, and in any case represents no one besides its own barbaric leadership. The Baathist government of Syria does not represent the Syrian people, but only the Baath party, itself recruited from the minority sect of Alawites. The government of Lebanon consists entirely of Syrian puppets, who (again) represent the interests of the Syrian Baath party, rather than those of the Lebanese people. And so on.

Think about this long enough and you will soon realize why conferences among Arab states generally lead to worse situations than they start from, and why, in the last analysis, regional stability must depend upon the threat of external force. There may therefore be no alternative to the gunboat diplomacy with which the Western powers kept the peace during the years of Ottoman decline.

We are told that an enduring Western presence in the Middle East will increase the likelihood of a “holy war” against us: such was the threat made by Saddam Hussein, who discovered that he was a Muslim shortly after bombs began raining on his palace. We should remember, however, that the Arabs are by no means all Muslims; a large number of them are Christians, many (including Hussein) are atheists, and some--including Assad and his entourage--belong to sects like the Druze and the Alawites, who perfected the art of survival over centuries of religious war. Muslims, too, are divided, and are increasingly disposed to ask themselves why God loses so many of the battles declared in his name. The more often the cry of jihad is raised, therefore, the more faint will be the passions stirred by it.

Rather than quake in our shoes at he mention of Islam, let us remember the millions of Arab Christians and our duty to protect them. Let us in particular remember the Christians of Lebanon, whose country we betrayed.