So it’s a resignation after 200 deaths – but thousands lost to wars around the globe are a different matter?

Perhaps Lebanon’s citizens have a keener taste for political morality than those of us in the west, writes Robert Fisk

The aftermath of the explosion in Beirut (AFP)

Uneasy is the head that wears a crown. But the heads – and the crowns – come in all shapes and sizes. Take an electrical engineering professor with a PhD in computer engineering from Bath University and compare him with a lawyer with a BA in jurisprudence at Oxford, and a Yale history graduate who started his career in the oil business.

The first has just resigned from his job after the death of at least 210 innocent civilians. The second and third never thought of resigning after participating on false pretences in a war that ultimately caused the death of up to half a million innocent civilians. Indeed, both continue their lives today, as unapologetic as they are safe from prosecution.

So what makes responsibility so different for Hassan Diab and the likes of Tony Blair and George Bush Jr? Poor old Hassan knew little of the explosives that would destroy the lives of his people last week. Tony and George knew very well the explosive power they were to unleash when they invaded Iraq in 2003. The Lebanese prime minister will presumably return to his necessarily humble role as a Beirut academic. The UK prime minister and US president both wrote self-serving memoirs. Blair continues to dispense worldly advice to democrats and dictators for outrageously high rewards.

But Diab, we have to remember, has refused to take responsibility for the explosion that overwhelmed Beirut; it was the system of corruption in Lebanon that was to blame. “They tried to throw their sins on the cabinet and hold it responsible,” he declared in his miserable resignation speech. In other words, the crown did not lie uneasily upon Diab’s head – because he wasn’t even wearing it! It was the mysterious “they”, which he mentioned 22 times without having the courage to name names, who had usurped his power. At least he didn’t accuse the west. Be sure, therefore, that “they” are all Arabs.

At least Messrs Bush and Blair lay the blame for their own Iraqi bloodbath on just one Arab – even if they had to accuse him of threatening the US and Britain with non-existent weapons and compare him to a non-Arab former Austrian corporal with floppy hair. And even after the overthrow of Saddam, the two world statesmen could assure us that his blood-soaked nation would have been even more blood-soaked if they hadn’t so bloodily invaded Iraq in the first place.

Poor Diab didn’t even overthrow his enemies. He could only say that since he had no power – and certainly no crown – he would “wage the battle of change” alongside his people, albeit that his enemies’ weapon of mass destruction had already exploded. Blair continues to lecture around the world. Diab will presumably confine future audiences to his students at the American University of Beirut (once they have repaired the windows).

But it’s a bit of a stretch, isn’t it, for us to nod with arrogant approval at Diab’s departure while ignoring the profoundly worrying comparison with another leader who has allowed his people to die in far greater numbers and without even the excuse of unidentified corrupters to blame for their hellish departure. If Diab must now reflect on the waste of life in Lebanon, what must it be like to declare victory over Covid-19 after the deaths of more than 163,000 Americans – more, surely, than would ever have been killed by Saddam’s fantasy weapons, even if they had existed?

Indeed, compared with Donald Trump, Diab is among the angels. Ammonium nitrate is a very dangerous substance, but the Lebanese prime minister never urged his people to inject themselves with bleach or subject themselves to ultraviolet light to stay alive. Far from resigning from his morbid presidency, Trump promotes himself as a saviour, and yet – yea, even now – we fear that his maniacal rule will continue for another four years. And it’s a telling feature of our age that the pitiful leader of an imploded nation can be regarded as a master of sanity and good sense in comparison with the most powerful man in the world. It’s the difference, I suppose, between corruption of the state and corruption of the brain – which, in America’s case, seems to be the same thing.

In fact, when we take a look at the Trumps, the Jair Bolsonaros, the Rodrigo Dutertes, the Viktor Orbans and the Alexander Lukashenkos, it is perfectly clear that Diab is a man of near-angelic personality. Compare him with the Abdel Fattah el-Sisis and the Bashar al-Assads and he’s really the kind of guy who might make a very pleasant (if over-talkative) next-door neighbour. Give me an engineering class from Diab any time if the alternative is a lesson in democracy from Trump’s gruesome fellow clowns.

The parallels, of course, go on to the crack of doom. Take the little sleight of hand, just revealed, that Trump’s man in the State Department used to skirt the laws that were meant to regulate US arms sales to humanitarian, freedom-loving states such as Saudi Arabia – in order to smother concerns about civilian casualties in the Yemen war. In May of last year, it transpires, Mike Pompeo issued what was called an “emergency certification” to push forward with sales of $8.1bn (£6.2bn) in weapons to Mohammed bin Salman and his father – and their United Arab Emirates ally – without getting the usual approval from Congress.

This wasn’t illegal, mind you. But the State Department’s Office of the Inspector General has made it clear that it prevented Congress (who, as we know, are not terribly keen on the Saudi crown prince) from reviewing these sales when it was trying to block the transfer of military equipment to the kingdom because of the number of US weapons that had a habit of exploding among hospitals, schools, wedding parties and other obvious military targets. A conservative estimate suggests that about 4,800 of the 7,000 civilian deaths in Yemen since 2016 have been caused by Saudi-led forces. So you can see why Pompeo performed his jiggery-pokery on Congress.

Not that Pompeo knew that the bombs and missiles he was sending off to the Gulf would kill civilians. They could have been used to destroy the Houthis – or even kept in a military warehouse for a few years until they were needed. But culpability? Riyadh says that it abides by international law in Yemen. Pompeo holds a law degree from Harvard, but it obviously didn’t trouble him when he wanted to get those beautiful weapons – as his master has often called them – off to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques.

So is that it? If deaths are in the half million or the tens of thousands or just a few thousand, you can rest on your laurels, with or without a crown. A few hundred and you need to run for cover. But maybe there’s another message: that the people who live in that little kitchen garden at the far end of the Mediterranean with their decomposing warlords and worthless money have a keener taste for political morality than we do. Here’s a question then. Come November, who will have the more responsible, moral and less corrupted government: Washington or Beirut?