I have always been keen on digging up history, especially in these dark days we are going through when accusations and counter accusations fly left and right.
 

One ironic thing I still cant get myself to swallow is the way some politicians always like to portray themselves as the ones to bring about reforms and change while painting the Lebanese Forces as a militia and a bunch of thugs.
 

And, just for the record, and to set the wandering minds straight about those matters, the Lebanese Forces has had a proven track record in working as hard on the civilian aspect of the Lebanese problems as well as fiercely fighting on the battlefield.
 

Very much unlike those that have made a living and managed to attract people around them by criticizing the LF’s every action and slandering the name of this institution.
 

I do not deny that in the past, during the bitterest years of the war that ravaged Lebanon, the Lebanese Forces acted like a militia, in fact, just like all the other warring factions that were participating in the dance of death, but, at the same time, the Lebanese Forces had in mind a vision for the country.
 

Although the Lebanese Forces started out as a grouping of militias that were all fighting to keep the country free of any foreign control, it soon realized that what they were fighting was merely the result of an unhealthy society…to win their fight they would have to go deeper to the roots of the problem and work directly on the cause.
 

Many in the Lebanese Forces leadership had a vision concerning this, a vision they wanted so hard to implement, and that was the formation of a healthy society, and from that would emerge the healthy individual, whose devotion to his country would lead him to put his countries best interests first and foremost before anything else.

A citizen who understood and appreciated his country and did not seek another place to call home.

A citizen who like Jubran once said, would not ask what his country was providing him, but rather was weary as what he could do to help out his country in need.
 

Ever since Dr. Samir Geagea took over the leadership of the Lebanese Forces, in 1986, he realized the emergency of acting on this vision and making it a reality in order to save the country from the deep dark mud it was sinking in.
 

He started working on achieving these goals, targeting primarily the Lebanese society he and his fighters were living in, in an attempt to start from home and grow outwards to engulf the whole region and then the whole country.
 

And one of the very first results that came out was Social Security.
 

Other introductions were public transport, educational reform, health care and medical assistance.
 

The reader has to understand that the mere fact of making those achievements was a miracle in a country that had been ravaged by nine terrible years  of other wars being fought on its soil…
 

And, one of the last projects before the bloody, gloomy corridor that the country would enter in 1989, a corridor that was to veil three year’s work with a shadow of blood and destructionone of the last great projects presented by the Lebanese Forces to the Lebanese people, was the “National Council For Development”.
 

This council’s motto was a very nice one: instead of providing the citizens with fish to eat, it would teach them how to fish and catch their own food.
 

Here’s a video of DSG in 1989 as he launched this magnificent project.
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDyY73reyWg
 

Much like it was back in 1986, the Lebanese Forces today is still following the same road, and that is to build a solid enough Lebanese Society, a society that would be able to lift itself above the abyss most of its leaders have sought to drown it in, hoping by weakening it, to be able to better rule it.
 

I know many of my countrymen choose to remember from history what best fits their current political inclinations, but to forget your history this way would definitively mean to gamble on your future as this would leave one open to influence by any Tom Dick and Harry with an agenda to implement.