A very quiet invasion

Michael Totten reports:

A few days ago Lebanese daily newspaper Al Mustaqbal quietly reported a limited Syrian invasion of Lebanon.

Al Mustaqbal reported that:

Syrian troops on Thursday reportedly have penetrated three kilometers into Lebanese territories, taking up positions in the mountains near Yanta in east Lebanon's Bekaa Valley.

Totten comments:

If Israel sent the IDF three kilometers into Lebanon and started digging trenches and building bunkers it would make news all over the world. But Syria does it and everyone shrugs. Hardly anyone even knows it happened at all.

Syria can, apparently, get away with just about anything. I could hardly blame Assad at this point if he believes, after such an astonishing non-response, that he can reconquer Beirut. So far he can kill and terrorize and invade and destroy with impunity, at least up to a point. What is that point? Has anyone in the U.S., Israel, the Arab League, the European Union, or the United Nations even considered the question?

And links to YNet, which reported:

Syria has called on its citizens to leave Lebanon ahead of an expected "eruption" in that country, Arab and Iranian press reports have said.

The media reports were translated and made available by MEMRI in a special dispatch on Sunday.

I guess the still cosmopolitan and tolerant - and (if flawed) democratic - state of Lebanon is viewed as an acceptable casualty by the new Realpolitik that pervades the post-Blair and, effectively, post-Bush era.