By Barry Rubin

Years of waiting–though leaks have been plentiful–have just about ended with the word from the international tribunal that four Hizballah officials, including the group’s deputy military commander Mustafa Badreddine were involved in killing Lebanon’s former prime minister Rafiq Hariri in February 2005. Yet Hizballah is now the leading force in Lebanon’s government while its partner in the killing, the Syrian dictatorship, is Lebanon’s foreign patron.

The indictments are setting off a potential crisis in Lebanon. Hizballah wants outright condemnation of the tribunal; more sober pro-Syria figures want to ignore it. The democratic opposition–whose single most important leader is Said Harir, Rafiq’s son, want to cooperate with the tribunal. Nominally, the U.S. government wants Lebanon to work with the tribunal. But since the Obama Administration has done virtually nothing to prevent a Syrian-Iranian takeover and Hizballah as a key element in running the country, it is ill-placed to have any effect even if it wanted to do so.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton remarked that the Special Tribunal’s:

“work is legitimate and necessary. It represents a chance for Lebanon to move beyond its long history of political violence and to achieve the future of peace and stability that the Lebanese people deserve. Those who oppose the Special Tribunal seek to create a false choice between justice and stability. Lebanon, like any country, needs and deserves both.”

The trouble with such statements is that while on a rhetorical level they make good sense, compared to reality they are quite silly. In fact, the Tribunal findings might well reignite political violence. As for a “false choice between justice and stability,” Hizballah and its allies are saying in effect that if Lebanon chooses justice, they will destabilize it. Here is a major problem with the Obama Administration: it doesn’t take sides; it makes platitudes.

Nor does it face up to challenges. What it should be saying is that the United States would support those who want to implement the conclusions and oppose those who are blackmailing Lebanon, warning: Let us get away with murder or we will wreck the country and perhaps kill you. Given such a choice and knowing that they cannot depend on Obama, what do you think Lebanese leaders will choose? “Stability,” of course. When you cut through all of the nice diplomatic language, the United States ends up in practice on the side of the Islamists even when proclaiming that it is doing the exact opposite.

As for the other conspirator in the murder, Syria’s, whatever noises the administration is making–enough to satisfy a lot of the mass media–the government is still basically trying to help dictator (and murderer) Bashar al-Asad to survive.

This leaves just one possibility: cutting off aid to Lebanon’s armed forces. The administration would probably oppose this by saying that the army hasn’t let Hizballah get any of its U.S. supplied weapons (that’s partly because Hizballah has better quality ones!); that giving such aid is a way for projecting U.S. influence in Lebanon; and that otherwise Iran and Syria will become the main suppliers for the military.

Whatever the merits of these arguments, the idea that Lebanon’s mostly-Shia Muslim army could supply a counterwieght to Hizballah is pretty meaningless since the government giving the army its orders is headed by a pro-Syrian president who was the army’s last commander.