USCFL - A Time for Choosing between Principles and Denial

That our government is beholden to our people, that it has no other source of power than the will of our people and that it will do everything in its power to serve our people’s interests. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the Lebanese Revolution and confess that our “sister” Syria can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

You and I are told we must choose between Arabism (left wing) and nationalism (right wing) agendas, but I suggest there is no such thing as left wing or right wing. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream-the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for appeasement have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, "The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits."

Our government leaders know a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do that; it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing.

1. Lebanon is today confronted with an economic affliction of great proportions. We suffer from the longest and one of the worst budget deficits in our nation’s history. It distorts our economic decisions, penalizes thrift, and crushes the struggling young and the fixed-income elderly alike. It threatens to shatter the lives of thousands of our people.

For the last ten years and under the Hariri regime, we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children's future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals.

You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we are not bound by that same limitation?

The economic ills we suffer will not go away in days, weeks, or months, but they will go away. They will go away because we, as Lebanese, have the capacity now, as we have had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve and regain this last and greatest bastion of freedom in the Middle East.

2. Lebanon today is also confronted with political baggage second to none. Due to a series of bilateral agreements imposed on the country following Taif, Syria today is actively interfering in every aspect of Lebanese political, security, and economic life. All freedoms have been severely curtailed; political parties have been dismantled and their members disbanded, arrested or exiled. The authorities increasingly use the accusation of "collaboration with the Zionist enemy" as the favored weapon in their war on freedom of expression and peaceful dissent.

In addition to Hezbollah, which has effectively become an armed mini-state within a state as the PLO was in Lebanon back in the 1970s; Syria sponsors a host of rejectionist Palestinian extremist organizations based in Damascus with extensions and roots in Lebanon's refugee camps. Also operating under Syria's orders are other renegade Shiite groups in northeastern Lebanon and a number of radical Sunni Islamist organizations based in Tripoli that Syrian intelligence occasionally unleashes in order to terrorize vocal opponents of Syria's occupation.

Just as the Taliban are inextricably linked to Usama Bin Laden's Al-Qa'ida thugs and criminals, so too the Syrian regime is organically intertwined with this gallery of terrorists. Under Syria's auspices, Lebanon has been transformed into a "duty free zone" for international terrorism. Small wonder why Syria persistently impedes efforts at bringing about comprehensive regional peace: this would spell the end of its lucrative empire of terror and drug cultivation and trafficking.

It should be clear by now that our current government is not the solution to our problem.

So there will be no misunderstanding, we have got to find a way not to do away with our government; but rather to make it work—work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide political and economic opportunity, not smother it; foster change and productivity, not stifle it.

So, as we begin our new journey, let us take inventory. We are a nation that has a government—not the other way around. Our Government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.

Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, "What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power." But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.

Yet any time you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we're denounced as being opposed to their strategic goals. It seems impossible to legitimately debate their solutions with the assumption that all of us share the desire to help the less fortunate. They tell us we're always "against," never "for" anything.

If we look to the answer as to why, for so many years, we Lebanese achieved so much, as individuals, it was because we unleashed the energy and individual genius of our people worldwide except on this great Land of ours called Lebanon.

So, with all the creative energy at our command, let us begin an era of national renewal. Let us renew our determination, our courage, and our strength. And let us renew our faith and our hope.

We have every right to dream heroic dreams. Those who say that we are in a time when there are no heroes just don't know where to look. There are entrepreneurs with faith in themselves and faith in an idea who create new jobs, new wealth and opportunity. The same goes for political activists whose patriotism is quiet but deep. Their values sustain our national life.

We shall reflect the compassion that is so much a part of your makeup. How can we love our country and not love our countrymen, and loving them, reach out a hand when they fall, heal them when they are sick, and provide opportunities to make them self-sufficient so they will be equal in fact and not just in theory?

To those neighbors and allies who share our freedom, we will strengthen our historic ties and assure them of our support and firm commitment. We will match loyalty with loyalty. We will strive for mutually beneficial relations. We will not use our friendship to impose on their sovereignty, for our own sovereignty is not for sale.

As for the enemies of freedom and other potential adversaries, they will be reminded that freedom is the highest aspiration of the Lebanese people. We will negotiate for it, sacrifice for it; we will not surrender for it—now or ever.

Our forbearance should never be misunderstood. Our reluctance for conflict should not be misjudged as a failure of will. When action is required to preserve our freedom, we will act. We will maintain sufficient strength to prevail if need be, knowing that if we do so we have the best chance of never having to use that strength.

Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is as formidable as the will and moral courage of our free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have. It is a weapon that we as Lebanese do have. Let that be understood by those who practice terrorism and prey upon their neighbors.

If all of this seems like a great deal of trouble, think what's at stake. We are faced with the most evil enemy mankind has known in his long climb from the swamp to the stars. There can be no prosperity anywhere in Lebanon if there is no freedom within our land. Those who ask us to trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state are architects of a policy of appeasement and accommodation.

They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right. Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits-not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.

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Article:	A Time for Choosing between Principles and Denial
Author:	Ziad K. Abdelnour -- e-mail: ziad@freelebanon.org
Date:	June 2002