The capital, Beirut, is in better shape than it has been in more than three decades. It's like an Arabic version of the French Riviera once again. That's one side of the country. There is another. More than once since the Syrian military was evicted in 2005, the Paris of the Middle East became the Baghdad of the Levant.
It is going to happen again. No Lebanese people I know think history has tired of molesting their country. Predicting the timing of Lebanon's chronic outbursts of violence is impossible, but it's not hard to see that another conflict is coming sooner or later.
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2009/02/totten-on-the-next-israel-hezbollah-war/9597/
