Promising signs of real Lebanese independence from Syria have abounded, including an unearthing and analysis of a mass grave outside of the former headquarters of Syrian military intelligence in Lebanon . Open exploration into Syria?s destructive history in Lebanon and progress in the Rafiq Hariri assassination investigation is being driven by the adamant Lebanese refusal to bury the past. In a region in which assassinations and atrocities have been a historical norm to politics, this reckoning for Syria is the first promising example that brutality and its agents are no longer safe from reportage and confrontation from those they have wronged.

As the Lebanese confrontation of the truth of the Syrian occupation is played out in front of an international audience, Syria has responded by aggressively countering accusations, with a willingness to concede nothing. This seems to come out of a culturally-rooted impulse that the importance of saving face is paramount as well as a fear that conceding anything in the Lebanese unearthing of the uncomfortable truths of the occupation, culminating in the Hariri’s assassination, will be used by the international community to further isolate Syria or by the US in an attempt to justify a Middle East regime change.