It’s always good to start a political campaign off with a bang. In Lebanon’s case it was another political assassination, this time of Antonie Ghanem, a pro-western member of the Christian Phalange party. Ghanem has been cited as a possible compromise candidate for President in the parliamentary vote due on September 25th.

But the main question that has got everyone talking is not who will win, but whether the vote will take place at all. If sufficient members boycott it, the Lebanese political system will enter its worst political crisis since the end of the 1975 – 1990 civil war/invasion period.

The dispute centres around the determination of pro-western PM Fouad Siniora to continue governing, even though a good chunk of his cabinet has resigned in protest at his attempts to curry favour with Washington even at the expense of Lebanon’s interest in the region.

The various opposition parties argue that the presidential vote requires a two-thirds support; Siniora’s supporters, by some fancy interpretation of the constitution argue that a simple majority will suffice. They have threatened to hold the vote anyway and select a President on that basis.

To get around that, incumbent pro-Syrian President Lahoud has said that he will appoint a caretaker government led by the head of the army.

The US has said that it will not interfere in Lebanon’s affairs – it’s just that it won’t recognise a PM appointed by Lahoud, even though such an act is arguably constitutional. Not that they’re interefering or nothing.

This would leave Lebanon with two presidents and two PMs – and the potential for another state, this one on the frontline with Israel, to fall into the sort of chaos that allows militant groups open slather.

Would Israel invade again in those circumstances? If not, it is not because of international condemnation for the last jaunt. They could care. It is because they could not afford another defeat -and Hezbollah, by far the best organised political grouping, would benefit immensly from Lebanese political chaos.

What the Lebanese seem to want above all is an end to the middle east proxy war being fought within Lebanese politics – a condition to which it is predisposed by the official recognition that different officeholders must come from Christian, Shia and Sunni communities. In the undermining of national sovereignty by both the Iraq invasion – and the US’s shameful refusal to condemn the 2006 Israeli invasion – there’s less chance of that than any.

Which leaves the grim prospect that the place will be another piece of collatoral damage from “military humanitarianism”, suffering a civil war that would be a sort of 70s nostalgia trip, a worse example of such – if you exclude of course the recent revival of Xanadu, the musical – it is hard to imagine.