BEIRUT — Colonialism was not merely a political and economic hegemony exercised by Western powers over large parts of the world. It was also a profound cultural and ideological plot intended to distort the history of colonized peoples, to fool them, and to impose deviant models of knowledge and values on them.

This is what US envoy Thomas Barrack is doing by exploiting the collective Lebanese consciousness, sometimes by calling on them to emulate the “amazing” example of the new Syrian interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa (the former HTS leader known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani), and other times by his open lie that Hezbollah welcomed the Israeli occupation forces by scattering flowers in the 1970s.

He made such false claims in an interview with Al-Jadeed TV. When the interviewer corrected him, he added that Hezbollah emerged as a result of the events of the 1970s, which are well-known to everyone: The daily Israeli attacks on the southerners at the time and the blatant American interference in Lebanese affairs.  

Commenting on Barrack’s lie, journalist Pierre Abi Saab wrote on X: “This is Trump’s culture and this is the Trump administration: a culture of domination, arrogance, and colonial barbarism; a culture steeped in illiteracy, ignorance, impudence, and absolute self-confidence, based on contempt for all rules and norms, and a rejection of international legitimacy and international law. They all come from the same intellectual stable!”

For his part, journalist Hassan Illaik wrote: “The idiot [Morgan Ortagus] has been succeeded by an even idiot.”

It is often said “there is a world of difference between the two” when comparing a seasoned sage with an evasive man. This is the case when comparing Washington’s diplomats with Tehran’s diplomats, such as late Amir Hossein Abdollahian, who moved from one country to another defending the dignity of the peoples of West Asia until his honorable martyrdom.

As for the likes of Washington’s notorious diplomats, whom there is no room to mention here, as each is more devious than the next, like Thomas Barrack, whose record is replete with gambling, financial and moral scandals, but they come to us to preach about honor and dignity.

Observers have expressed their fear about the path the situation in Lebanon could take after Barrack’s departure, particularly given his threat that Washington would withdraw its hand from “mediation” if Lebanon did not abide by the clause requiring Hezbollah to disarm. This could lead to Lebanon being isolated internationally and Arab-wide as a punishment for its well–calculated stance.

The U.S. envoy reiterated, “My role is a political mediator to positively influence the parties.”

The irony is that Barrack has never been a “mediator,” but rather a mouthpiece for Israel as he himself stated, “We are in Lebanon to help bring about peace, but there is a timetable, and time is running out.”

In parallel, a hostile infantry force of approximately 20 Israeli soldiers penetrated from the vicinity of the border town of Abbasiyeh toward the Rihana Bari area in the Mari plain, at dawn on Wednesday, searching several homes, and interrogated a number of Lebanese residents and Syrian workers.

For more than an hour and a half, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri presented Barrack with detailed figures on the Lebanese citizens killed by Israel, since November 27, reminding him of what was happening in Syria.

Berri stressed that as long as the situation remained as it was, it would be difficult for anyone to raise the issue of disarming the Resistance, especially since tens of thousands of Lebanese remain displaced as a result of the ongoing aggression, and preventing the southerners from returning to their demolished villages to reconstruct them.

Barrack also met Druze leader Walid Jumblatt to dissect what is happening in Syria, claiming that al-Sharaa has only 25,000 soldiers and that they are incapable of threatening Lebanon. According to Axios, Barrack arranged an Israeli-Syrian meeting in Paris on Thursday to formulate “urgent security understandings” regarding southern Syria.