Lebanon's Civil War

In the book, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, the book’s author Nassim Nicholas Taleb describes the people in Lebanon, his native country. It was, he writes, “an example of coexistence,” “a mosaic of cultures and religions,” a place where “people learned to be tolerant” of others, and where “the terms balance and equilibrium were often used.”

The Lebanese people believed themselves blessed. Their climate was Mediterranean, of course, and their citizens were sophisticated, refined, educated, peace-loving, and “acted as if they were in an old James Bond...