What is the reason behind this conflict among the Lebanese? What is worth the threats to burn the country down and expose it on one hand, and the insistence on an international tribunal whose ruling will wreak havoc in Lebanon - regardless of the name of the guilty side or sides - on the other hand? Let us drop the chorus of the defense of the resistance and the song of “justice and truth.” The resistance can impose its armed control over Lebanon whenever it wants or is wanted to and has caused – along with its allies and those who have signed understandings with it – damages that cannot be repaired by its image and reputation, both domestically and abroad. This all happened without any help from its rivals and enemies who stood by and watched it drown in the mud of the alleyways and the scourge of arrogance and tyranny caused by an old inferiority complex. As for the resistance's ministers and deputies, they are living samples of an accumulation of psychological and social complexes that cannot be cured. As for “truth and justice,” the question is revolving around their meaning within a group of people who have proved to be incapable of benefitting from the historic opportunities offered to them to build a modern state. They thus preferred to retreat to the laps of the sects and seek a new tutelage abroad whenever there is hope of seeing the end of the old tutelage. Therefore, “truth and justice” have no value unless they are invested in a political project that has clear answers to the questions of personal and public freedoms, social justice and the future vision for Lebanon's relations with the Arab world and the Arab-Israeli conflict. The lingo featured in the literature of the March 14 forces is not any good in the latter areas, except in terms of increasing the vagueness. Moreover, just like there is no “art for art's sake,” there is no need for “truth for truth's sake.” Whoever demands truth and justice must impose their values on his team, institutions and representatives firstly. As for saying that truth would prevent the continuation of the assassinations or the implication of violence in political life, the callers for truth did not explain to us what they will do with it once its sun rises. But for a change and in order to exit the routine of the exchange of coded and camouflaged accusations, let us say for once that the conflict (the political one and not the sectarian one) in Lebanon is revolving around the authority, and that the “resistance” is a codename for a project, and the “truth” is the codename for another. The first wishes to monopolize the authority to establish a rule which it perceives as being more committed to the rejectionist axis on the external level, and closer to the ambitions of the defenseless classes on the domestic level. However, what this team is not announcing is that its archetype is North Korea and not Hanoi and that what is required for Lebanon is to act as a reservist force and an arena for the duel of the greater states, and not the capital of the southbound revolution. In this context, there is a great difference between the experiences of North Korea and North Vietnam (whose capital is Hanoi). The second on the other hand wishes to maintain its current share and method (ones of “monopolization” in the language of the March 8 team) without being able to put forward an in-depth and serious reform program, thus allowing the flaws affecting the political, administrative and economic systems in Lebanon spread out without any accountability. It is also exercising an arbitrary foreign policy that is not taking into consideration Lebanon's weak position in its surrounding and its need for more than mere adulation and praise toward the outside. The question that is now facing the Lebanese who are divided among sects, groups and parties is the following: is it for such two projects with their disgusting and repulsive sectarian covers that our country should be destroyed for the hundredth time and our citizens killed by the thousands? Maybe the time has come to get rid of the crust of the slogans and look into the dark reality and its blocked horizons.
