There are those who try, as they attempt to make sense of the Middle East, especially that presented by the kaleidoscopic confusions of Lebanon, to mold  in opposition to the obvious villains, out of the clayey others who oppose them, figures who may then appear, in the fervid Western imagination (just as fervid, when that Western imagination is attempting to deal with  those who first gave rise to the phrase "fervid Oriental imagination"), as heroes.

For example, in Iraq it was always assumed that those Shi'a Arabs who had bravely opposed Saddam Hussein, or been related to those who had bravely opposed him, and even been tortured or killed by him, must of course be wonderful fellows themselves. But all kinds of Shi'a had this happen; it happened to Moqtada al-Sadr's family. It happened to those "turbans" (as Christian Iraqis in exile bitterly call them) who are now on top, but who turn out to be quite unpleasant themselves.

In Saudi Arabia, we assume that because the major enemy of the Al-Saud appears to be a domestic group allied to Al Qaeda, that somehow the Al-Saud are okay, are our kind of fellows, corrupt as they may be. But they aren't. Their view of Infidels is as malevolent as any on earth; their use of the Money Weapon to spread Islam, through paying for mosques and madrasas throughout the Western world, and establishing new academic "centers" for the study of Islam or, in some cases, merely buying influence in Middle Eastern departments, or paying for well-upholstered chairs for those who will do their bidding, makes these daggers-and-dishdashas boys, with their identical sneers of cold command, are as resolutely and dangerously Muslim as any on earth. Those Infidels who console themselves with the fact that so many of the Al-Saud are so very decadent, with their gambling and their call girls and their drugs and their enslaved help and their everything, confuse that with the ideology that they not only do not abandon, but sometimes, to compensate for that same decadence, even more firmly support and do everything they can to promote in the heedless West.

In Egypt those who have rightly identified the Mubarak regime, with its Friends-and-Family-Plan (a plan that includes even a line of succession, with Gucci-loafered oily young Gamal Mubarak as the anointed successor to his thick-necked stolid father), as intolerably corrupt and cruel, have not realized that some of the "democrats" on whom they have placed all their hopes turn out, in their Islam-prompted attitude toward Israel, to be as implacably hostile as any of those they claim to oppose. See, for example, the example of Said Eddin Ibrahim, and be prepared to be disappointed.

Then there is Lebanon. Lebanon has not had a statesman since Charles Malik. Siniora has never been worthy of respect; far from being a fearless leader, he has capitulated again and again. And his remarks about Israel, his attempt to bring about Lebanese unity in a shared orgy of gloating -- over Israel's receiving the bodies of two murdered soldiers in exchange for sending back, living and unharmed, prisoners who are the very same kind of people as the killers of those soldiers (who had been captured wounded, but alive) were, and are.

And since one of those being handed over by Israel alive, and unharmed, is a Lebanese Druse -- Samir Kuntar, a monster, and an islamodruse showing he could be as a fanatical a killer of Israelis as any straight-up Muslim -- and that Samir Kuntar, who killed a young Israeli father and smashed the head of his four-year-old daughter against a rock, will be not shunned, and not despised, apparently, by the Lebanese, but will be given, perhaps as I write this is being given, a hero's welcome.

Yes, a Muslim hero. And an Arab hero. And if Siniora has his way, a Lebanese hero as well.

Conclusions should be drawn from the spectacle in Lebanon today, conclusions that extend far beyond Hezbollah and include many of those the American government has chosen to support, but who, like the Al-Saud, like some of those opposed to Mubarak, like many of the Shi'a Arabs who suffered under Saddam Hussein, turn out to be malevolent, cruel, horrifyingly indecent, and dangerous, to Israel, to the United States, to Infidels everywhere.

Siniora does not merit American support. He merits...nothing.