Walid the weathervane

At a Washington Institute for Near East Policy conference in October 2007, Walid Jumblatt was asked by Dennis Ross, now Barack Obama’s point man on Iran, what Washington could do for Lebanon. Jumblatt, with a twinkle in his eye, replied: “If you could send some car bombs to Damascus, why not?” The audience, few of them sympathetic to the Syrian regime, greeted Jumblatt’s comment with delighted laughter and prolonged applause. Jumblatt, understanding his audience well, continued: Hezbollah is a “brigade or division of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards that occupy half of Lebanon, paralyzing the economy and facilitating Syrian efforts to kill us.” It was vintage Jumblatt. Well, 2007 vintage anyway. Among the leaders of March 14, Jumblatt, the “weathervane,” has typically been first to react to the changing climate: in the past 12 months, he has forged a rapprochement with his traditional Druze rival Talal Arslan in the wake of