Lately, this topic has been the subject of every major or minor political debate and discussion… change the government…down with Sanioura’s govt…etc…

Suddenly, everyone forgot the efforts put up by PM Sanioura during the 34 days of the Israeli onslaught on Lebanon…everyone forgot the important role he played in the making of resolution 1701…everyone forgot the stress and the hardships the man successfully went through to see a cease to the hostilities brought through…the question that comes to mind is WHY???

The way I, and many fellow Lebanese see it, is that the demand for a govt overthrow is an offensive defense… i.e., HA knows that it is cornered, and must submit its weapons sooner or later…having learned from the lessons of the past (I’m sure HN is very weary of the LF experience from the time they unconditionally handed in their weapons until 2005 and is not willing to repeat the same mistakes), HA wants to raise the stakes at the negotiations table as much as possible in order to sell their weapons for the highest political price attainable… so it is all a question of time… 

Going to the street, IMO, is not a viable solution because despite all that is said, this would be a replay of 8th march/14th march 2005…HA knows better than to play the numbers game this time… 

This would leave them with the other choice, and that is to withdraw their ministers from the govt…here again, I doubt they will venture into such a thing…as for going the long way by having their MPs resign, and forcing a new election, I believe it would take too long a time for it to achieve the desired results… 

My first question to those that are calling for a change in govt: who do you have in mind to form the new govt? 

1. Saad el Hariri? IMO, and with all due respect, he is not PM material…neither his age, nor his political expertise warrant the post…
2. Siniora? what the heck…he is already there…what are they trying to do?
3. Karami? Well…twice he was selected as PM and twice he was overthrown by public protests…care to go for a 3rd???
4. Mr. X? what is his agenda? What are his positions towards Syria? I’m guessing that HA’s definition of “national unity” is “anyone who is pro HA” … from what we have seen lately, that includes a whole bunch of ex Syrian henchmen and cronies…are we in front of another attempt to reintroduce Syria??????? I mean just like they have a right to question the “patriotism” of anyone, we, the remainder of the Lebanese people, have the same right…after all, Lebanon is still our land… 

My second question is what does HA want from the new “bayen wizari” or governmental agenda? 

• Recognition of its right to bear arms? once the Shebaa farms issue is settled, this right will exist no longer…
• vetoing power? that would be contrary to any democratic concept…and frankly speaking, a vetoing power in the hands of the likes of HA and aoun is indeed a scary thought, especially after all we have seen in the last two months in terms of political agendas…
• including major powers in the govt? IMO this is an empty one…in any democracy, parties participate in govts through coalitions with other parties…moreover, what is, in HA’s dictionary, the definition of “major party”? I’m betting they mean the FPM…hey doesn’t the famous “memorandum of understanding” constitute such a coalition? or are there hidden factors no one is aware of?? as for the other political figures, I doubt they deserve to be called a party, well, at best they are a bunch of has-beens who want a spot in the limelight and are ready to do whatever it takes… 

My third question is what can be achieved with Lahoud still in power??? basing my analysis on his performance in the last year, as well as his unhidden bias for Syria, he would use delaying tactics to negatively affect the timely formation of the new govt… 

This would mean constitutional vacuum, and of course could lead to, among many other problems, a cancellation of the international court…a purely Syrian demand…everyone remembers how HA deputies boycotted all cabinet meetings with the aim of sabotaging the international court project. 

Is this another attempt to do so? are we today catering for requests of Bachar in his last speech???

I mean it is clear that the only beneficiary of this cancellation would be Syria and anyone involved in the assassination… 

I, as many, have a lot to reproach to this govt…it may not be the best we have, and it certainly committed a lot of mistakes in its lifetime, but overthrowing it now would be a grave tactical mistake…

IMO, the change should start at the top of the pyramid…change the president…it is high time that Lahoud goes…then, with a LEBANESE president, one with only LEBANON’s interests at heart, can we embark in the rest of the journey…changes would include everything from the weapons of HA to main political figures today on the scenes… 

As the saying goes, if you want to do it, do it right, or don’t… 

I was thinking yesterday, after hearing the news that Syria decided to cut off its electricity supplies to Lebanon, and threatening to close its borders, I was thinking that how much more evidence do those so called patriots, for whom Syria is the elder sister, need in order to be convinced that Syria does not want stability in Lebanon…

In an earlier article I discussed this matter, but today, I wish to ask the anti March 14^th alliance, why do they still consider supporting Syria as patriotic? I mean if you want to do something, do it right or don’t do it at all…

Let us recall Syria’s actions in Lebanon…

From 1976 to 2005, Syria was present in Lebanon.

Syria’s mandate when it came in as part of an arab peace keeping force, was to assist the Lebanese government in dismantling Palestinian guerilla fighters that were posing a big threat for Israel, and by so doing, help bring about a stop to the civil war that had erupted a year ago. It over extended this mandate, literally kicked out other members of the peace keeping force, and then as time went by, it strengthened its grasp until the whole of Lebanon was under its control. A presence that lasted for a total of 29 years.

Throughout its stay in Lebanon, Syria has assassinated political figures from all sects and political affiliations (Mufti Hassan Khaled, Kamal Junblat, Bachir Gemayel, Moawad, Rafik Hariri) as well as anti Syrian activists such as Ramzi Irani, Pierre Boulos, Jubran Tueini, Samir Kassir…those two lists are by no means exhaustive…many files for unsolved crimes were either destroyed or archived for “lack of evidence”.

Throughout its presence in the country, Syria interfered with every single political action that occurred. From appointments of simple governmental employees all the way to strategic figures in Parliament, the Prime Minister as well as the Presidency.

Syria tapped freely into Lebanese water supplies, Lebanese electricity and levied taxes on many necessities such as fuel. Syrian workers were allowed to work without any paperwork on Lebanese soil, they were not subjected to any of the laws that govern foreign employees, they paid no income taxes, and most of all they had precedence over more skilled employees from other nationalities such as Egyptian, Sudanese etc…
(more…)

What many Lebanese are failing to realize, either because they do not see the whole picture or because it does not suit them to see it, its that Syria cannot tolerate a strong Lebanon.

This has its roots far back in history…
Until the 70s, Syria had a very unstable political setup…there was a coup d’etat every other day (figuratively speaking) and most of these were prepared and cooked back in Lebanon.
Hafez al Assad realized this and saw that the key to his firm grasp of the Syrian arena was through controlling Lebanon…we saw what we saw from 1976 all the way to today even…

The next point is that Syria’s economy is very much dependent on Lebanon…many goods are smuggled through the borders into Lebanon and sold for higher prices than they would fetch back in Syria…Also the drug and weapons trade is a very lucrative one for Syrian merchants…All these bring in a large sum of money that helps the Syrian economy stay stable. A UN force on the borders would put a massive dent in this traffic…

The Third point is that a strong govt. in Lebanon ultimately means there are going to be demands for Syria’s accountability in the actions she did during the 29 years it stayed in Lebanon…every single sect in Lebanon at one point or another, suffered from Syrian occupation…we still have hundreds of prisoners in Syrian jails, regardless of what some unscrupulous, so called Lebanese, politicians may say…

The fourth and equally important point is that a strong govt in a stable Lebanon will carry on with the investigation of the Harriri murder and alongside this, there will be an international court…and Syria, more precisely the Syrian regime, ranks very high in the list of suspects…

All those points should explain to you why Bachar el Assad is so keen on destabilizing the country…UN troops on the border will allow the UN Resolution 1701 to be carried out faster, and therefore speed up Israeli withdrawals, which would ultimately mean a light in the long dark tunnel we, the Lebanese,  have been crossing…
Hearing Bachar el Assad on Dubai TV last night is enough to show you his real motives: “any demarcation of the borders in Shebaa farms will cause HA to become illegal…and we do not want that… let the Israelis withdraw, then we will delimit the border…”  translate this as : “ooops looks like the Lebanese are going to get Shebaa farms after all…lets try and stop this…”

The latest threat to reach us from Damascus, came from their minister of foreign affairs, Mr Moallem, and that was to close the borders between the two countries if ever UN troops were deployed between Lebanon and Syria…
IMO, let them close them…lets see who will loose…we are still at war…so I guess suffering for a couple of weeks is much better than to keep suffering for your lifetime and that of your kids…
 

Lebanon should at last do whatever is in its own interests…for nearly thirty one years, we have been doing whatever suited the others…be it Syria, Iran, Palestine and the list is long… Time now to look into our own interests…

What’s really sad these days is that one cannot express his or her anger at the situation, at the uncertainties facing the Lebanese people, at the lack of security that the weapons of Hezbollah have generated amongst a large number of Lebanese citizens without being faced with labels of treason and collaboration…

What’s more any conversation you start, is automatically turned into a pro/con Hezbollah dispute…and worse, you become anti Shiite if you dare utter a word against Hezbollah…

I mean what is so complex in there? what is making it so hard for people to finally understand that we are Lebanese just like they are, we care for Lebanon just like they claim to, we shed blood for this country just like they did, we resisted foreign occupation just like they did…

Why is there this denial anytime the subject is approached? Why is there this desire to move the country towards dictatorship, where one part of the population takes all the decisions and the rest must follow without any questions or risk reprisals? Why has it become impossible to talk about the issues that this nation is facing without the dialog being sidetracked?

When the war started, we were told keep any comments we had till after the war because the people had to show unity in front of the problem…so we did…we took the bombings, the ruining of the economy…we accepted the lack of basic human needs, the sad stories coming from relatives in the south about them being used as human shields…till the day the ceasing of hostilities was declared…

When we came to voice our concerns and our anger at the whole thing, we were told that there were dead bodies to burry, and that out of respect we should keep silent…

Yet in parallel, we heard voices calling for an overthrow of the government, for a new government of so called “National Unity”…also in parallel, we saw amounts of money being paid to some of those who were affected by the bombardments as if in an effort to create a wave of public outcry against the government…

When the Syrian president Bachar el Assad made his remarks as to March 14 group being an Israeli product, an MP from Hezbollah came out with remarks yet he retracted them soon afterwards…

This surely looks like one side staying still while the other side is digging a grave for it…

As civilized people, we try to solve problems through diplomacy…yet in the face of blindness and utter arrogance, the most plomatic means sometimes are fruitless: you point out a problem, they come screaming at you that you are heartless…you raise a question, you are either threatened by death or better still, declared as an Israeli agent which amounts to the same thing as legalizing your murder…

Whatever you say, you are replied by “we are the majority”…although what majority is that, I cannot understand…We tried, after the Syrian pullout, to dialog to use the diplomatic way to diffuse the Hezbollah arms issue, and push aside the bitter cup that was raised in the form of Israeli threats, yet it was in vain…

How can a group that beleives in “turning the other cheek” deal with a group fanatically convinced of “an eye for an eye” ???

This can no longer be tolerated…It appears that the more we try to play along the lines of cohabitation the more the other side understands this as fear and weakness…

I can assure you that it is neither…we do not want anymore wars, but if this is the price to pay for this country to regain a similarity of peace and tranquility we will pay it…

Amidst a wave of a post war rush by some neighboring countries to score cheap points at the expense of the Lebanese sacrifices, we were entertained , a couple of days ago, by the Syrian president giving a speech in front of an audience of so called Arab journalists…

Forty five minutes of spaghetti rhetoric and pseudo logic connoted by blatant falsifications of history. If anything, the speech demonstrated the truth of a famous phrase said by Albert Einstein about the limits of the universe and the infinity of certain aspects of human behavior.

The first impression the viewer gets is that he is watching a show put up by a child apprentice magician who has picked up a couple of tricks and is performing in front of an audience of adults who are too keen not to show any signs of boredom and pretend to follow him so as not to deepen his personality complexes.

I couldn’t help but recall famous words said almost fourteen years ago by Dr Samir Geagea on the occasion of the LF Martyrs’ day:

“And they position themselves as judges of history to prosecute the innocent and clear the enemy of all charges”…

I will not bore the reader by diving into an analysis of his speech as it would be more in the area of psychoanalysis than political study. However, it is my duty as a Lebanese citizen, to point out certain facts that Mr Assad seems to have omitted if not altogether forgotten in his frenzy.

I wish to remind his Excellency that:

• It was through an Americano-Israeli green light that his father was permitted to enter Lebanon with his troops in 1976 with a mission of disarming and dismantling the Palestinian factions that were active on the Lebanese territory at the time. So who is more criminal in this case? A group of people defending their lands against terrorist organizations who are abusing them or a coutry that pretends to defend the Palestinian cause and is willing to sacrifice it in order to gain a foothold in a neighbouring country?
• It was with an Israeli green light that his fighter planes were allowed, for the first time in nearly twenty years I must add, to fly over the Christian enclave and bombard it , thus opening the way for the Syrian troops to march in and occupy the land. Was this not a form of collaboration???
• It is thanks to Israel that the Assad regime is still on the Syrian throne, when it was logical that USA would be targeting them after Saddam. Israel feared that toppling Assad could open the way for Islamic Fundamentalists to come to power and this might cause a reopening of the Golan Heights fronts, which by the way were kept quiet through an under the table deal between Israel and the Syrian regime ever since 1973. And yet, we are surprised to hear him accusing the 14th of MArch group of being Israeli products…
• Mr Assad’s regime harbors or assists most of the terrorist in the region from Al Qaeda all the way to Hamas (who in an ironic way proclaim to be freedom fighters). They are very keen on exporting these messengers of hate, death and destruction to the entire world, more precisely the to the arab world that Mr. Assad claims to have so much love for, killing arab women and children, in order to bring it “Liberation”. Yet one finds it pretty strange that Syria being amongst the countries with the most land occupied by Israel has not lifted a finger to liberate those lands by itself.  

Another thing to be said is that I find it quite ironic that Mr. Assad should be talking about resistance and handing out advices and theories about freedom and democracy when his regime is well known for brutally silencing anyone who dares approach these subjects.

The gist of this speech could be summarized by the following: Syria is doing all it can to break out of the isolation it has been cornered in ever since the assassination of PM Hariri in February 2005 and their forced exit from Lebanon. It wants desesperately to regain its old position as a key player in the region, and is even ready to settle for any lower role, because frankly speaking, this regime is built on under the table deals and shady interventions as well as living off the goods of another country such as Lebanon. Without such possibilities, the Syrian regime has no means to breath and would slowly be strangled to death. But I guess Mr. Assad got the reply of the international community through the words of the USA ambassador to the UN Mr. John Bolton who said about the speech: “Meaningless words”.

In conclusion I wish to say that I was very proud of the reactions that came from the Lebanese people and politicians from all the spectrum of the political rainbow in the country. These reactions are enough to make one proud of being a Lebanese in times like this.