Over the years international politics have been dominated by eminent personalities who happen to be the sons of equally prominent former politicians.

Two cases in point are George W Bush and Bashir al-Asad.

Many armchair critics have recently been quick to point out the differences in style and approach between fathers and sons by trying to figure out how things might have worked out on the international scene – particularly in the Middle East – had the show still been in the hands of their parents.

The other week The New York Times pointed out that Bush’s embrace of Israel shows a gap with his father, particularly since the first President Bush had been tough on Israel especially the Israeli settlements in occupied lands that Mr Sharon had helped develop.

On the contrary the NYT claims that when they first met as US president and Israeli PM, George W. Bush had made it clear to Ariel Sharon that he would not follow in the footsteps of his father.

This is more than a stylistic difference.

Analysts have been quick to show that “the embrace of Israel represents a generational and philosophical divide between the Bushes, one that is exacerbating the friction that has been building between their camps of advisers and loyalists over foreign policy more generally”.

The first President Bush came to the Oval Office with long diplomatic experience – among which the helmsmanship of the CIA – strong ties to Arab leaders and a realpolitik view that held the United States should pursue its own strategic interests, not high-minded goals like democracy, even if it meant negotiating with undemocratic governments like Syria and Iran.

The current President Bush has practically cut off Syria and Iran, by using his fight against terrorism as an added instrument in his quest for the creation of what Secretary of State C. Rice calls “a new Middle East”.

I tend to agree only to a certain extent that the differences between father and son are mainly to do with style.

On the other hand, many foreign analysts argue that the young Asad is more accommodating towards Hezbollah than his father ever was. It was in part thanks to his backing (apart from that from Iran) that it grew into a political force in Lebanon with an estimated 20,000 troop militia, having transformed itself from a pure guerilla resistance organization into a political movement.

As a clear sign of this, although the Syrians are detested by most Lebanese, Hezbollah had managed to organise large pro-Syrian rallies in Lebanon on 8 March, 2005, to counter the anti-Syrian demonstrations. According to most estimates there were approximately half a million pro-Syrian demonstrators in Beirut although Syrian sources had allegedly inflated figures by reporting that 1.6 million persons had attended.

Some Lebanese claim that a substantial portion of the throng were paid or forced to attend by pro-Syrian Lebanese groups.

Certainly the Shiites in Lebanon, constituting the largest sect in the country, about 30-35 per cent of the 3.7m population, tend to see the Alawite regime in Damascus as more co-religionist and as a protector of their hard-won concessions over the years. Particularly under Asad Jnr.

A biographer of Asad Jnr, David W. Lesch, had only last year claimed that the Bush administration had seemed to have accepted the view of France and others in Europe (who had not designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation as Washington has) that in such a fractured society it would be dangerous to antagonise Hezbollah too much. In fact the US and Europe were even reported – according to this biographer – to be encouraging Hezbollah to shed its militancy altogether and integrate itself totally in the political process.

The US experience in Iraq may also have been responsible for forming the Bush political process.

After all in Iraq the US tacitly cooperated with the majority Shiite population in carrying out the election process that culminated in the Shiites gaining the most seats in the new Iraqi constituent assembly that had been elected in the 30 January, 2005 election.

The biggest threat that Syria could have posed to Lebanon prior to the recent escalation of events was that it could have set out to destabilise Lebanon in the aftermath of the former’s troop withdrawal simply to prove what it had been saying all along – that the Syrian presence was necessary in order to stabilise Lebanon’s fissiparous tendencies.

Many argue that Asad Snr might have played his cards differently. No wonder at the time many used to compare him to a gazelle while other Arab leaders were dismissed as baboons!

Who had made Richard Muscat feel abandoned?

When pursued by a Super 1 investigative reporter, former Voice of the Mediterranean Managing Director Richard Muscat had stated – prior to the PAC hearings – that all in good time he will tell the “whole story” and that he felt let down.

Which begs the question:

Let down by whom?

Surely he did not have the MLP in mind.

And as for his “big story”, what could he have been hinting at?

Was it limited to his antics at the helm of VOM or could it have also included his days of broadcasting from Sicily, his years at the helm of AZAD or else his running of Radio 101? Or else his high ranking post at San Lucian?

When Eddie Fenech Adami was at the helm of the Nationalist Party, Muscat was very much an inside man.

He does not seem to carry the same clout with the Gonzi administration.

So what really made them defend him to the hilt to the extent that they did not even speak of his lack of good governance at the end of the PAC sittings?

Was there any fear within PN ranks that Muscat could actually spill the beans?

This might be all hypothesis and theorising but the mind boggles at the prospect of what Muscat could have really meant and had in mind when he spoke the way he did to the Super 1 reporter.

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Leo Brincat is the Main Opposition Spokesperson for Foreign Affairs and IT.