Thread:
1- To the amebae going apoplectic over the desperate calls of some Lebanese for the “reinstatement” of the “French Mandate,” it may be helpful to bone up history and the political taxonomy of France’s “mission” in the Levant.

2- After all, and belligerent spiteful “post-colonialist” gibberish aside, France’s presence in the East had for close to a millennium been part of a “mission,” NEVER a “colonial” enterprise. A little intellectual honesty and historical literacy go a long way in this regard.

3- To begin with, the 1920-1943 so-called “French Mandate” was NOT “French,” but indeed a “League of Nations Mandate,” entrusted to France. In that sense, France was answerable to the League of Nations (and its moral commitments,) not some base imperial instincts.

4- I also wrote earlier addressing the sophomoric neuroses of some that there is a difference with a distinction between a “Mandate” and a flat out “Colonial” exercise. If interested in the nuances of the terms and their history, feel free to consult a dictionary.

5- Likewise the example of Algeria that they brandish to establish the evil of Colonialism DOES NOT OBTAIN in the case of Lebanon. Lebanon was never a French colony. France never had a colonial policy vis-à-vis of Lebanon—indeed France NEVER had a “policy” as such v-à-v Lebanon.

6- The French Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Relations (at the Quai d’Orsay in Paris, in Colmar, and in Nantes) reveal that much. Likewise the British Foreign Office archives, the French “archives de l’armée,” as well as the family archives of General Henri Gouraud himself

7- shed a lot of light on this question, which keeps being distorted by bitter belligerent historically illiterate demagogic hacks. For close to a millennium, dating back to the Crusades, but at least since the early days of the adept “diplomacy” of François I & the Capitulations

8- (Imtiyazaat) obtained on behalf of Levantine Christians, and into the modern era of the “Mandate” from Gouraud’s times to De Gaulle’s, France’s approach to Lebanon had been consistently more emotive than pragmatic, more affective than effective.

9- Unlike the British, who had a precise policy, and therefore a well delineated colonial project in the East, driven by the jewel of their imperial holdings, India, France’s connections to the Levant were primarily sentimental, driven by a centuries’ old emotional attachment.

10- And so, Lebanon (part & parcel of France’s own spiritual foundations,) was NOT Algeria (a plain French Département.) So, please, enough mental vomit about non-extant & profoundly flawed parallels. In contrast to the above, the British have had a coherent “Arab nationalist”

11- objective, and a well-delineated policy to put that objective in place. And indeed, the only way the British were able to bring their objective to fruition (triumphing bogus Arab nationalism) was to quash French influence, France’s “emotional attachment.”

12- Mark Sykes himself (of Sykes-Picot fame) said it best: «Nous arriverons bien à dégoûter les Syriens de la France, et les Français de la Syrie.» So, ENOUGH with belligerent sophomoric demagoguery that some Lebanese are propagating as historical fact today.