General officer
A General Officer is an officer of high rank in the army, in some nations' air forces or marines. The term "general" is used in two ways: as the generic title for all grades of general officer and as a specific rank, it originates in the 16th century, as a shortening of captain general, which rank was taken from Middle French capitaine général. The adjective general had been affixed to officer designations since the late medieval period to indicate relative superiority or an extended jurisdiction. Today, the title of "General" is known in some countries as a four-star rank; however different countries use other insignia for senior ranks. It has a NATO code of OF-9 and is the highest rank in use in a number of armies, air forces and marine organizations; the various grades of general officer are at the top of the military rank structure. Lower-ranking officers in land-centric military forces are known as field officers or field-grade officers, below them are company-grade officers. There are two common systems of general ranks used worldwide.
In addition, there is a third system, the Arab system of ranks, used throughout the Middle East and North Africa but is not used elsewhere in the world. Variations of one form, the old European system, were once used throughout Europe, it is used in the United Kingdom, from which it spread to the Commonwealth and the United States of America. The general officer ranks are named by prefixing "general", as an adjective, with field officer ranks, although in some countries the highest general officers are titled field marshal, marshal, or captain general; the other is derived from the French Revolution, where generals' ranks are named according to the unit they command. The system used either a colonel general rank; the rank of field marshal was used by some countries as the highest rank, while in other countries it was used as a divisional or brigade rank. Many countries used two brigade command ranks, why some countries now use two stars as their brigade general insignia. Mexico and Argentina still use two brigade command ranks.
In some nations, the equivalent to brigadier general is brigadier, not always considered by these armies to be a general officer rank, although it is always treated as equivalent to the rank of brigadier general for comparative purposes. As a lieutenant outranks a sergeant major; the serjeant major was the commander of the infantry, junior only to the captain general and lieutenant general. The distinction of serjeant major general only applied after serjeant majors were introduced as a rank of field officer. Serjeant was dropped from both rank titles, creating the modern rank titles. Serjeant major as a senior rank of non-commissioned officer was a creation; the armies of Arab countries use traditional Arabic titles. These were formalized in their current system to replace the Turkish system, in use in the Arab world and the Turco-Egyptian ranks in Egypt. Other nomenclatures for general officers include the titles and ranks: Adjutant general Commandant-general Inspector general General-in-chief General of the Army General of the Air Force General of the Armies of the United States, a title created for General John J. Pershing, subsequently granted posthumously to George Washington Generaladmiral Air general and aviation general Wing general and group general General-potpukovnik Director general Director general of national defence Controller general Prefect general Master-General of the Ordnance – senior British military position.
Police Director General. Commissioner Admiral In addition to militarily educated generals, there are generals in medicine and engineering; the rank of the most senior chaplain, is usually considered to be a general officer rank. In the old European system, a general, without prefix or suffix, is the most senior type of general, above lieutenant general and directly below field marshal as a four-star rank, it is the most senior peacetime rank, with more senior ranks being used only in wartime or as honorary titles. In some armies, the rank of captain general, general of the army, army general or colonel general occupied or occupies this position. Depending on circumstances and the army in question, these ranks may be considered to be equivalent to a "full" general or to a field marshal; the rank of general came about as a "captain-general", the captain of an army in general (i.e. th
Kamal Jumblatt
Kamal Fouad Jumblatt was a prominent Lebanese politician. He was the main leader of the anti-government forces who opposed the Assad government in the Lebanese Civil War and major ally of the Palestine Liberation Organization until his assassination in 1977, he is the father of the Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt. Kamal Jumblatt was born on December 1917 in Moukhtara, he was born into the prestigious Kurdish Jumblatt family, who were traditional leaders of the Lebanese Druze community. His father, the powerful Druze chieftain Fouad Joumblatt, director of the Chouf District, was assassinated on 6 August 1921. Kamal was just four years old. After his father’s death, his mother Nazira played a significant political role in the Druze community for over a quarter of a century. In 1926, Kamal Jumblatt joined the Lazarus Fathers Institute in Aintoura, where he completed his elementary studies in 1928, he achieved his high school diploma, having studied French, Arabic and literature, in 1936, a philosophy diploma in 1937.
Jumblatt pursued higher studies in France, where he attended the Faculty of Arts at the Sorbonne University and obtained a degree in psychology and civil education, another one in sociology. He returned to Lebanon in 1939, after the outbreak of World War II and continued his studies at Saint Joseph University where he obtained a law degree in 1945. Kamal Jumblatt practiced law in Lebanon from 1941 to 1942 and was designated the Official State Lawyer for the Lebanese Government. In 1943, he became the leader of the Jumblatt clan after the death of Hikmat Joumblatt, bringing him into the Lebanese political scene. In September 1943, Kamal Jumblatt was elected to the National Assembly for the first time, as a deputy of Mount Lebanon, he joined the opposition to the ruling Constitutional Bloc, headed by the then-President, Bechara El Khoury. On 14 December 1946, he was appointed minister for the first time, for the portfolio of economy, in Riad Al Solh's cabinet, his term was from 14 December 1946 to 7 June 1947, he replaced Saadi Al Munla.
Sleiman Nawfal replaced Jumblatt as economy minister. In 1947, in spite of his own election for the second time as deputy, he thought of resigning from the government, he began to believe. After opposition groups attempted to pressure him into leaving he decided to remain in office. On 17 March 1949, Kamal Jumblatt founded the Progressive Socialist Party and declared its constitution on 1 May 1949; the PSP was a socialist party espousing secularism and opposed to the sectarian character of Lebanese politics. In practice, it has been led and supported since its foundation by members of the Druze community in general, the Jumblatt clan in particular. In the name of the PSP, Jumblatt called the first convention of the Arab Socialist Parties, was held in Beirut in May 1951. In the same year, he was reelected for the third time as Deputy of Mount Lebanon. In 1952, he represented Lebanon at the Cultural Freedom Conference held in Switzerland. In August 1952, he organized a National Conference at Deir El Kamar, in the name of the National Socialist Front, calling for the resignation of President Bechara El Khoury.
Due to these pressures, the President resigned the same year. Main Article: 1958 Lebanon Crisis In 1953, Jumblatt was re-elected Deputy for the fourth time, he founded the Popular Socialist Front in the same year and led the opposition against the new President, Camille Chamoun. During his presidency, the pro-Western President Chamoun tied Lebanon to the policies of the United States and the United Kingdom, who were at that time involved in the creation of the Baghdad Pact, comprising Hashemite Iraq and Pakistan; this was seen by pan-Arabists as an imperialist coalition, it was opposed by the influential Nasserist movement. Jumblatt supported Egypt against an attack by Israel and the United Kingdom in the Suez War of 1956, while Chamoun and parts of the Maronite Christian elite in Lebanon tacitly supported the invasion; the sectarian tensions of Lebanon increased in this period, both sides began to brace for violent conflict. In 1956, Jumblatt failed for the first time in the parliamentary elections, complaining of electoral gerrymandering and election fraud by the authorities.
Two years he was one of the main leaders of a major political uprising against Camille Chamoun's Maronite-dominated government, which soon escalated into street fights and guerilla attacks. While the revolt reflected a number of political and sectarian conflicts, it had a pan-Arabist ideology, was supported through Syria by the newly formed United Arab Republic; the uprising ended after the United States intervened on the side of the Chamoun government and sent the U. S. Marine Corps to occupy Beirut. A political settlement followed by. Jumblatt chaired the Afro-Asian People’s Conference in 1960 and founded the same year, the National Struggle Front, a movement which gathered a large number of nationalist deputies; that same year, he was reelected Deputy for the fifth time and the NSF won 11 seats within the Lebanese Parliament. From 1960 to 1961 he was Minister for the second time, for the National Education portfolio and in 1961 he was appointed Minister of Public Work and Planning. From 1961 to 1964 he served as Interior Minister.
On 8 May 1964, he won at the parliamentary elections for the sixth time. In 1965, he began joining together Arab nationalist and progressivist politicians into a Nationalist Personalities Front. In 1966 he was appointed Minister of Public Work and Minister
Beirut
Beirut is the capital and largest city of Lebanon. No recent population census has been conducted, but 2007 estimates ranged from more than 1 million to 2.2 million as part of Greater Beirut. Located on a peninsula at the midpoint of Lebanon's Mediterranean coast, Beirut is the country's largest and main seaport, it is one of the oldest cities in the world. The first historical mention of Beirut is found in the Amarna letters from the New Kingdom of Egypt, which date to the 15th century BC. Beirut is Lebanon's seat of government and plays a central role in the Lebanese economy, with most banks and corporations based in its Central District, Rue Verdun, Ryad el Soloh street, Achrafieh. Following the destructive Lebanese Civil War, Beirut's cultural landscape underwent major reconstruction. Identified and graded for accountancy, banking/finance and law, Beirut is ranked as a Beta World City by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network; the English name Beirut is an early transcription of the Arabic name Bayrūt.
The same name's transcription into French is Beyrouth, sometimes used during Lebanon's French occupation. The Arabic name derives from Phoenician Birut; this was a modification of the Canaanite and Phoenician word be'rot, meaning "the wells", in reference to the site's accessible water table. The etymology is shared by the biblical Beeroth which was, however, a different settlement somewhere near Jerusalem; the name is first attested in the 15th century BC, when it was mentioned in three Akkadian cuneiform tablets of the Amarna letters, letters sent by King Ammunira of "Biruta" to Amenhotep III or Amenhotep IV of Egypt. "Biruta" was mentioned in the Amarna letters from King Rib-Hadda of Byblos. The Greeks hellenized the name as Bērytós; when it attained the status of a Roman colony, it was notionally refounded and its official name was emended to Colonia Iulia Augusta Felix Berytus to include its imperial sponsors. Before, under the Seleucid Empire, the city had been refounded and known as Laodicea in honor of the mother of Seleucus the Great.
It was distinguished from several other places named in her honor by the longer names Laodicea in Phoenicia or Laodicea in Canaan. Beirut was settled more than 5,000 years ago and the area had been inhabited for far longer. Several prehistoric archaeological sites have been discovered within the urban area of Beirut, revealing flint tools of sequential periods dating from the Middle Paleolithic and Upper Paleolithic through the Neolithic to the Bronze Age. Beirut I was listed as "the town of Beirut" by Louis Burkhalter and said to be on the beach near the Orient and Bassoul hotels on the Avenue des Français in central Beirut; the site was discovered by Lortet in 1894 and discussed by Godefroy Zumoffen in 1900. The flint industry from the site was described as Mousterian and is held by the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon. Beirut II was suggested by Burkhalter to have been south of Tarik el Jedideh, where P. E. Gigues discovered a Copper Age flint industry at around 100 metres above sea level; the site had been built on and destroyed by 1948.
Beirut III, listed as Plateau Tabet, was suggested to have been located on the left bank of the Beirut River. Burkhalter suggested that it was west of the Damascus road, although this determination has been criticized by Lorraine Copeland. P. E. Gigues discovered a series of Neolithic flint tools on the surface along with the remains of a structure suggested to be a hut circle. Auguste Bergy discussed polished axes that were found at this site, which has now disappeared as a result of construction and urbanization of the area. Beirut IV was on the left bank of the river and on either side of the road leading eastwards from the Furn esh Shebbak police station towards the river that marked the city limits; the area was covered in red sand. The site was found by Jesuit Father Dillenseger and published by fellow Jesuits Godefroy Zumoffen, Raoul Describes and Auguste Bergy. Collections from the site were made by Bergy and another Jesuit, Paul Bovier-Lapierre. A large number of Middle Paleolithic flint tools were found on the surface and in side gullies that drain into the river.
They included around 50 varied bifaces accredited to the Acheulean period, some with a lustrous sheen, now held at the Museum of Lebanese Prehistory. Henri Fleisch found an Emireh point amongst material from the site, which has now disappeared beneath buildings. Beirut V was discovered by Dillenseger and said to be in an orchard of mulberry trees on the left bank of the river, near the river mouth, to be close to the railway station and bridge to Tripoli. Levallois flints and bones and similar surface material were found amongst brecciated deposits; the area has now been built on. Beirut VI was a site discovered while building on the property of the Lebanese Evangelical School for Girls in the Patriarchate area of Beirut, it was notable for the discovery of a finely styled Canaanean blade javelin suggested to date to the early or middle Neolithic periods of Byblos and, held in the school library. Beirut VII, the Rivoli Cinema and Byblos Cinema sites near the Bourj in the Rue el Arz area, are two sites discovered by Lorraine Copeland and Peter Wescombe in 1964 and examined by Diana Kirkbride and Roger Saidah.
On
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire known in Western Europe as the Turkish Empire or Turkey, was a state that controlled much of Southeast Europe, Western Asia and North Africa between the 14th and early 20th centuries. It was founded at the end of the 13th century in northwestern Anatolia in the town of Söğüt by the Oghuz Turkish tribal leader Osman I. After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe, with the conquest of the Balkans, the Ottoman beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire; the Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror. During the 16th and 17th centuries, at the height of its power under the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Empire was a multinational, multilingual empire controlling most of Southeast Europe, parts of Central Europe, Western Asia, parts of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, North Africa and the Horn of Africa. At the beginning of the 17th century, the empire contained numerous vassal states; some of these were absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries.
With Constantinople as its capital and control of lands around the Mediterranean basin, the Ottoman Empire was at the centre of interactions between the Eastern and Western worlds for six centuries. While the empire was once thought to have entered a period of decline following the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, this view is no longer supported by the majority of academic historians; the empire continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy and military throughout the 17th and much of the 18th century. However, during a long period of peace from 1740 to 1768, the Ottoman military system fell behind that of their European rivals, the Habsburg and Russian empires; the Ottomans suffered severe military defeats in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, which prompted them to initiate a comprehensive process of reform and modernisation known as the Tanzimat. Thus, over the course of the 19th century, the Ottoman state became vastly more powerful and organised, despite suffering further territorial losses in the Balkans, where a number of new states emerged.
The empire allied with Germany in the early 20th century, hoping to escape from the diplomatic isolation which had contributed to its recent territorial losses, thus joined World War I on the side of the Central Powers. While the Empire was able to hold its own during the conflict, it was struggling with internal dissent with the Arab Revolt in its Arabian holdings. During this time, atrocities were committed by the Young Turk government against the Armenians and Pontic Greeks; the Empire's defeat and the occupation of part of its territory by the Allied Powers in the aftermath of World War I resulted in its partitioning and the loss of its Middle Eastern territories, which were divided between the United Kingdom and France. The successful Turkish War of Independence against the occupying Allies led to the emergence of the Republic of Turkey in the Anatolian heartland and the abolition of the Ottoman monarchy; the word Ottoman is a historical anglicisation of the name of Osman I, the founder of the Empire and of the ruling House of Osman.
Osman's name in turn was the Turkish form of the Arabic name ʿUthmān. In Ottoman Turkish, the empire was referred to as Devlet-i ʿAlīye-yi ʿOsmānīye, or alternatively ʿOsmānlı Devleti. In Modern Turkish, it is known as Osmanlı Devleti; the Turkish word for "Ottoman" referred to the tribal followers of Osman in the fourteenth century, subsequently came to be used to refer to the empire's military-administrative elite. In contrast, the term "Turk" was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population, was seen as a disparaging term when applied to urban, educated individuals. In the early modern period, an educated urban-dwelling Turkish-speaker, not a member of the military-administrative class would refer to himself neither as an Osmanlı nor as a Türk, but rather as a Rūmī, or "Roman", meaning an inhabitant of the territory of the former Byzantine Empire in the Balkans and Anatolia; the term Rūmī was used to refer to Turkish-speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond.
In Western Europe, the two names "Ottoman Empire" and "Turkey" were used interchangeably, with "Turkey" being favoured both in formal and informal situations. This dichotomy was ended in 1920–23, when the newly established Ankara-based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name. Most scholarly historians avoid the terms "Turkey", "Turks", "Turkish" when referring to the Ottomans, due to the empire's multinational character; as the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum declined in the 13th century, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as the Anatolian Beyliks. One of these beyliks, in the region of Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by the Turkish tribal leader Osman I, a figure of obscure origins from whom the name Ottoman is derived. Osman's early followers consisted both of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine renegades, many but not all converts to Islam. Osman extended the control of his principality by conquering Byzantine towns along the Sakarya River.
It is not well understood how the early Ottomans came to dominate their
Republic
A republic is a form of government in which the country is considered a “public matter”, not the private concern or property of the rulers. The primary positions of power within a republic are not inherited, but are attained through democracy, oligarchy or autocracy, it is a form of government. In the context of American constitutional law, the definition of republic refers to a form of government in which elected individuals represent the citizen body and exercise power according to the rule of law under a constitution, including separation of powers with an elected head of state, referred to as a constitutional republic or representative democracy; as of 2017, 159 of the world’s 206 sovereign states use the word “republic” as part of their official names – not all of these are republics in the sense of having elected governments, nor is the word “republic” used in the names of all nations with elected governments. While heads of state tend to claim that they rule only by the “consent of the governed”, elections in some countries have been found to be held more for the purpose of “show” than for the actual purpose of in reality providing citizens with any genuine ability to choose their own leaders.
The word republic comes from the Latin term res publica, which means “public thing,” “public matter,” or “public affair” and was used to refer to the state as a whole. The term developed its modern meaning in reference to the constitution of the ancient Roman Republic, lasting from the overthrow of the kings in 509 B. C. to the establishment of the Empire in 27 B. C; this constitution was characterized by a Senate composed of wealthy aristocrats and wielding significant influence. Most a republic is a single sovereign state, but there are sub-sovereign state entities that are referred to as republics, or that have governments that are described as “republican” in nature. For instance, Article IV of the United States Constitution "guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican form of Government". In contrast, the former Soviet Union, which described itself as being a group of “Republics” and as a “federal multinational state composed of 15 republics”, was viewed as being a totalitarian form of government and not a genuine republic, since its electoral system was structured so as to automatically guarantee the election of government-sponsored candidates.
The term originates from the Latin translation of Greek word politeia. Cicero, among other Latin writers, translated politeia as res publica and it was in turn translated by Renaissance scholars as "republic"; the term politeia can be translated as form of government, polity, or regime and is therefore not always a word for a specific type of regime as the modern word republic is. One of Plato's major works on political science was titled Politeia and in English it is thus known as The Republic. However, apart from the title, in modern translations of The Republic, alternative translations of politeia are used. However, in Book III of his Politics, Aristotle was the first classical writer to state that the term politeia can be used to refer more to one type of politeia: "When the citizens at large govern for the public good, it is called by the name common to all governments, government". Amongst classical Latin, the term "republic" can be used in a general way to refer to any regime, or in a specific way to refer to governments which work for the public good.
In medieval Northern Italy, a number of city states had signoria based governments. In the late Middle Ages, writers such as Giovanni Villani began writing about the nature of these states and the differences from other types of regime, they used terms such as a free people, to describe the states. The terminology changed in the 15th century as the renewed interest in the writings of Ancient Rome caused writers to prefer using classical terminology. To describe non-monarchical states writers, most Leonardo Bruni, adopted the Latin phrase res publica. While Bruni and Machiavelli used the term to describe the states of Northern Italy, which were not monarchies, the term res publica has a set of interrelated meanings in the original Latin; the term can quite be translated as "public matter". It was most used by Roman writers to refer to the state and government during the period of the Roman Empire. In subsequent centuries, the English word "commonwealth" came to be used as a translation of res publica, its use in English was comparable to how the Romans used the term res publica.
Notably, during The Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell the word commonwealth was the most common term to call the new monarchless state, but the word republic was in common use. In Polish the term was translated as rzeczpospolita, although the translation is now only used with respect to Poland. Presently, the term "republic" means a system of government which derives its power from the people rather than from another basis, such as heredity or divine right. While the philosophical terminology developed in classical Greece and Rome, as noted by Aristotle there was a long history of city states with a wide variety of constitutions, not only in Greece but in the Middle East. After the classical period, during the Middle Ages, many free cities developed again, such as Venice; the modern type of "republic" itself is different from any type of state found in the c
Political corruption
Political corruption is the use of powers by government officials or their network contacts for illegitimate private gain. An illegal act by an officeholder constitutes political corruption only if the act is directly related to their official duties, is done under color of law or involves trading in influence. Forms of corruption vary, but include bribery, cronyism, parochialism, influence peddling and embezzlement. Corruption may facilitate criminal enterprise such as drug trafficking, money laundering, human trafficking, though is not restricted to these activities. Misuse of government power for other purposes, such as repression of political opponents and general police brutality, is considered political corruption. Masiulis case is a typical example of political corruption; the activities that constitute illegal corruption differ depending on the jurisdiction. For instance, some political funding practices that are legal in one place may be illegal in another. In some cases, government officials have broad or ill-defined powers, which make it difficult to distinguish between legal and illegal actions.
Worldwide, bribery alone is estimated to involve over 1 trillion US dollars annually. A state of unrestrained political corruption is known as a kleptocracy meaning "rule by thieves"; some forms of corruption – now called "institutional corruption" – are distinguished from bribery and other kinds of obvious personal gain. A similar problem of corruption arises in any institution that depends on financial support from people who have interests that may conflict with the primary purpose of the institution. Over time, corruption has been defined differently. For example, in a simple context, while performing work for a government or as a representative, it is unethical to accept a gift. Any free gift could be construed as a scheme to lure the recipient towards some biases. In most cases, the gift is seen as an intention to seek certain favors such as work promotion, tipping in order to win a contract, job or exemption from certain tasks in the case of junior employee giving the gift to a senior employee who can be key in winning the favor.
In politics, corruption undermines democracy and good governance by flouting or subverting formal processes. Corruption in elections and in the legislature reduces accountability and distorts representation in policymaking, it violates a basic principle of republicanism regarding the centrality of civic virtue. More corruption erodes the institutional capacity of government if procedures are disregarded, resources are siphoned off, public offices are bought and sold. Corruption undermines the legitimacy of government and such democratic values as trust and tolerance. Recent evidence suggests that variation in the levels of corruption amongst high-income democracies can vary depending on the level of accountability of decision-makers. Evidence from fragile states shows that corruption and bribery can adversely impact trust in institutions. Corruption can impact government’s provision of goods and services, it increases the costs of services which arise efficiency loss. In the absence of corruption, governmental projects might be cost-effective at their true costs, once corruption costs are included projects may not be cost-effective so they are not executed distorting the provision of goods and services.
In the private sector, corruption increases the cost of business through the price of illicit payments themselves, the management cost of negotiating with officials and the risk of breached agreements or detection. Although some claim corruption reduces costs by cutting bureaucracy, the availability of bribes can induce officials to contrive new rules and delays. Removing costly and lengthy regulations are better than covertly allowing them to be bypassed by using bribes. Where corruption inflates the cost of business, it distorts the field of inquiry and action, shielding firms with connections from competition and thereby sustaining inefficient firms. Corruption may have a direct impact on the firm's effective marginal tax rate. Bribing tax officials can reduce tax payments of the firm if the marginal bribe rate is below the official marginal tax rate. However, in Uganda, bribes have a higher negative impact on firms’ activity than taxation. Indeed, a one percentage point increase in bribes reduces firm’s annual growth by three percentage points, while an increase in 1 percentage point on taxes reduces firm’s growth by one percentage point.
Corruption generates economic distortion in the public sector by diverting public investment into capital projects where bribes and kickbacks are more plentiful. Officials may increase the technical complexity of public sector projects to conceal or pave the way for such dealings, thus further distorting investment. Corruption lowers compliance with construction, environmental, or other regulations, reduces the quality of government services and infrastructure, increases budgetary pressures on government. Economists argue that one of the factors behind the differing economic development in Africa and Asia is that in Africa, corruption has taken the form of rent extraction with the resulting financial capital moved overseas rather than invested at home. In Nigeria, for example, more than $400 billion was stolen from the treasury by Nigeria's leaders between 1960 and 1999. University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers estimated that from 1970 to 1996, capital flight from 30 Sub-Saharan countries total
1958 Lebanon crisis
The 1958 Lebanon crisis was a Lebanese political crisis caused by political and religious tensions in the country that included a U. S. military intervention. The intervention lasted for around three months until President Camille Chamoun, who had requested the assistance, completed his term as president of Lebanon. American and Lebanese government forces occupied the port and international airport of Beirut. With the crisis over, the United States withdrew. In July 1958, Lebanon was threatened by a civil war between Maronite Christians and Muslims. Tensions with Egypt had escalated earlier in 1956 when pro-western Christian President Camille Chamoun did not break diplomatic relations with the Western powers that attacked Egypt during the Suez Crisis, angering Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser; these tensions were further increased. Nasser felt; as a response and Syria united into the United Arab Republic. Lebanese Sunni Prime Minister Rashid Karami supported Nasser in 1956 and 1958. Lebanese Muslims pushed the government to join the newly created United Arab Republic, while the Christians wanted to keep Lebanon aligned with Western powers.
A Muslim rebellion, supplied with arms by the UAR through Syria caused President Chamoun to complain to the United Nations Security Council. The United Nations sent a group of inspectors that reported that it didn't find any evidence of significant intervention from the UAR; the toppling of a pro-Western government in Iraq's 14 July Revolution, along with the internal instability, caused President Chamoun to call for American assistance. U. S. President Eisenhower responded by authorizing Operation Blue Bat on July 15, 1958; this was the first application of the Eisenhower Doctrine, under which the U. S. announced that it would intervene to protect regimes it considered threatened by international communism. The goal of the operation was to bolster the pro-Western Lebanese government of President Camille Chamoun against internal opposition and threats from Syria and Egypt; the plan was to occupy and secure Beirut International Airport, a few miles south of the city to secure the port of Beirut and approaches to the city.
The chain of command for Operation Blue Bat was as follows: the Eisenhower administration at the strategic level. At the end of June and Boston were anchored at Piraeus, while Des Moines, from which Vice Admiral Charles R. Brown was flying his flag, was at Villefranche-sur-Mer. Land forces included the 2nd Provisional Marine Force and the Army Task Force 201 at the tactical level; each of these three components influenced its execution. The operation involved more than 14,000 men, including 8,509 United States Army personnel, a contingent from the 1st Airborne Battle Group, 187th Infantry from the 24th Infantry Division and 5,670 officers and men of the United States Marine Corps; the 2nd Battalion 8th Marines arrived on July 16 after a 54-hour airlift from Cherry Point, North Carolina They were supported by a fleet of 70 ships and 40,000 sailors. On July 16, 1958, Admiral James L. Holloway, Jr. CINCNELM and CINCSPECCOMME, flew in from London to Beirut airport and boarded USS Taconic, from which he commanded the remainder of the operation.
The U. S. withdrew its forces on October 25, 1958. President Eisenhower sent diplomat Robert D. Murphy to Lebanon as his personal representative. Murphy played a significant role in convincing both sides of the conflict to reach a compromise by electing moderate Christian general Fuad Chehab as incoming President, while allowing Chamoun to continue in power until the end of his term on September 22. Prime Minister Rashid Karami formed a national reconciliation government after the 1958 crisis ended. Multinational Force in Lebanon Lebanese Civil War 1982 Lebanon War Mohammed Shafi Agwani, The Lebanese Crisis, 1958: A Documentary Study, 1965. Erika G. Alin, The United States and the 1958 Lebanon Crisis, American Intervention in the Middle East, 1994. Pierrick el Gammal, Politique intérieure et politique extérieure au Liban de 1958 à 1961 de Camille Chamoun à Fouad Chehab, Sorbonne University, 1991. Irene L. Gendzier, Notes from the Minefield: United States Intervention in Lebanon and the Middle East 1945–1958, 1997 Agnes G. Korbani, U.
S. Intervention in Lebanon, 1958–1982: presidential decisionmaking, 1991. Nawaf Salam, L’insurrection de 1958 au Liban, Sorbonne University, 1979. Jack Schulimson, Marines in Lebanon 1958, Historical Branch, G-3 Division, Headquarters, U. S. Marine Corps, Department of the Navy, United States Marine Corps, 1966, 60 p. Salim Yaqub, Containing Arab Nationalism, The Eisenhower Doctrine and the Middle East, 2003; the Lebanon Operation. Contingency Operations. United States Army Center of Military History. Historical Manuscript Collection 2–3.7 AC. F Tab D. Archived from the original on 12 June 2010. Retrieved 2 July 2010. Gerges, Fawaz A.. "The Lebanese Crisis of 1958: The Risks of Inflated Self-Importance". Beirut Review: 83–113. Lesch, David W.. "Prelude to the 1958 American Intervention in Lebanon". Mediterranean Quarterly. 7: 87–108. Little, Douglas. "His Finest Hour? Eisenhower and the 1958 Middle East Crisis"
