A Discourse of Immorality

So I refused to write for a while, just wanted to wait, wait until something worthy of commenting on appears on the Lebanese political arena. I didn't want to rush to conclusions or make faulty judgements. I wanted to see where the country will head after the war.

More and more the divide in the country grows; it's a divide on the vision. PM Seniora in his efforts during the war to reach out to the international community was successful, successful in pushing to end the Israeli aggression, successful in garnering plenty of funds to kickstart the reconstruction effort, and successful on a diplomatic level to set a course for the country following the war. His efforts reminded me of the late PM Hariri in 1996 when he rallied the world during the Israeli Grapes of Wrath campaign and manged to coin a new term for our resistance then, the Lebanese resistance.

Right after the war, Aoun unleashed a scathing attack on the Cabinet, then the "choir" followed. But the most significant of the calls for dismantling the government came from Hizbullah the past three days. Yesterday Sayyid Nasrallah accused Seniora of immoral acts and of colluding with the enemy on Al-Jazeera. I wonder what the vieweres were thinking while they watched Sayyid Nasrallah. Perhaps they were conflicted because Seniora was also a hero during that war in his own right. How easily people forget....

At any rate, Al-Mustaqbal daily today published an article reminding Sayyid Nasrallah that if Seniora's reception of Britich PM Tony Blair was immoral, then what about Qatar, for instance? Qatar, which her Emir's visit to Lebanon was trumpeted by Hizbullah, hosted on its airport runways the first batch of smart bombs that headed to Israel before the war.

Again, if Sayyid Nasrallah considered Seniora's reception of Blair as hurtful to many's feelings, then what about when Nasrallah presented a submachine gun as a gift to the Syrian Head of Intelligence in Lebanon Rustom Ghazaleh on the eve of their troop withdrawal from Lebanon, ignoring the feelings of many Lebanese who considered the Syrian regime as the culprit in PM Hariri's assassination (to say the least).

What about also when Parliament Speaker Berri, as Hizbullah's representative during the war (as claimed by Hizbullah then), met with U.S. State Secretary Condoleeza Rice while the fighting was still ongoing? Couldn't we consider that a meeting between the U.S. and Hizbullah? Wouldn't that be immoral in Sayyid Nasrallah's eyes?

When immorality becomes a concept used widely in political rhetoric, then in my view the political discourse has regressed to a dangerously low level, regressed to the olden days. And we all remember what those days were like....

"Nobody knows how many rebellions, besides political rebellions, ferment in the masses of life which people earth."