Please General, do your job

In most nations civilian rule of the army is hallowed political ground; it ensures that the power of the gun cannot be used to overcome that of the ballot box. Yet in a country such as ours, where the army is neutered by the executive, our parliament holds virtually no power to implement the laws it rarely passes, citizens are detained and released on a whim from a zaim while those convicted of working for Israel are set free, the prospect of independent decision making by the army would seem ideal.  As the Syrian situation spills over into Lebanon this summer (and probably the next), the issue of whether the army should act to preserve the ‘interests of national security’ without the meddling of politicians will likely come up again and again. Our official policy of ‘disassociation’ from that conflict is an obvious self defense mechanism that has, until recently,