There are those who whisper in Beirut that the reason behind the surprising and violent campaign waged by MP Michel Aoun against the whole country, its politicians, journalists and institutions, is the fact that the man has not yet recovered from the shock he received when security services arrested one of his main aides on charges of spying for Israel, and that he still cannot believe that retired General Fayez Karam confessed his being a foreign agent, and gave a statement sufficient to arrest and convict him, and perhaps convict others. Evidence of such a state of “denial” is the fact that someone browsing Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) website these days can read a main article entitled: “This is Fayez Karam's Prison Cell and This is How the Intelligence Branch is Treating Him”. One can also read that the same FPM's MP Ibrahim Kanaan “will be questioning the government soon, demanding that responsibilities be defined and that those responsible for the violations that have and continue to take place in the Karam case be held to account”. Indeed, Aoun and his movement still consider the detainee to be “one of them”, defending him, being pained at his being detained “in an underground room (…) with central air-conditioning where he cannot control the temperature”, and losing sleep over “the health risks that threaten his life”, his being “prevented from seeing the sun” and other such details. The former General and his movement may be right in their outcry against the inhumane treatment of detainee Karam, if it proves true, but such a stance should apply to all detainees and prisoners in Lebanese jails, whatever the charges raised against them. We have never heard neither Aoun nor any of his aides being pained at the situation of detainees for example in Roumieh Prison, which has become an example to be quoted by Human Rights bodies for the extent of its violations of the most basic principles. What is truly a cause for concern, however, is this state of “political schizophrenia” which the FPM and its leader suffer from, when they demand that changes be made to the conditions of detention of one accused of being an agent of the Mossad, while their main ally which they tirelessly defend, especially after the Burj Abu Haidar incidents, i.e. Hezbollah, and the remaining constituents of the “environment that embraces the Resistance” are demanding that the toughest sentences be issued for foreign agents, and the death sentence for some of them, as they consider that lenient verdicts have led to encouraging these people to be foreign agents and may encourage others, and they do not care about the comfort and luxury of those who may have caused casualties in the ranks of the Resistance and provided the enemy with information that helped it target its infrastructure. There are also those who say that Aoun's campaign, which seems unjustified in terms of timing and intensity, is also attributable to “shouldering the burden” for Hezbollah in its systematic attack against the government, after unbridled exchanges in the media reached a dangerous extent, forcing the party's Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah to pull the breaks based on advice from beyond the border. But Hezbollah has always said that it has no need to hide behind a veil when it wants to send a message to someone, and that it has enough courage and self-confidence to place it finger on the wound without much consideration when it comes to protecting its influence. How then when the issue is of the size of removing its armed forces from the capital? The problem with Aoun is that he perhaps forgets himself when some of his supporters gather before him. He regains the enthusiasm of the days when he was the head of a military government threatening to bomb Damascus, even if the “target” has changed today, and returns to boastful behavior which no one takes seriously anymore, in light of the settlement standing between the major players and their sponsors, one which has defined the limits of any problem that might be faced by the “National Unity Government”. Such nostalgia for the days of bravado indicates Aoun's inability to develop his ideas and his movement and turn them from an emotional state to a political state. Thus his emotional fits remain mere bubbles that suddenly swell up, seeming large and impressive, before quickly waning and fading away as if they had never been.
