The Lessons of UNSCR 1559
By: Joseph Hitti
09 September 2004
Boston, Massachusetts

The arrow that Prime Minister General Michel Aoun threw on March 14, 1989 with his call for the liberation of Lebanon finally hit the bull’s eye last Thursday when the United Nations Security Council voted UNSCR 1559. This victory is for General Aoun and him alone. No other politician or group, resident or in exile, who claims to be against the Syrian occupation of Lebanon, has devised a strategy, marketed it to the right decision-making centers of the world, then implemented it without alteration or compromise, as Prime Minister Aoun has successfully done.

Here is a military strategist who was faulted for decades by his enemies and detractors for being too rigid and uncompromising, for not being a true “politician”, and for lacking the finesse of diplomacy. Yet, with unflinching persistence and the sharpest of minds, and starting from scratch from the cold loneliness of exile, he conducted one of the most successful political campaigns in Lebanon’s modern history. From declaring a War of Liberation against the Syrians in 1989, to his eviction from office by force in 1990, to exile in 1991, and through the long and lonely decade of the 1990s when he was the only one speaking up his convictions about the wrong done to his country, he pushed the US Congress to make Lebanese sovereignty a centerpiece of the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act (SALSRA). When we consider that George H. W. Bush (father) was the president who engineered the surrender of Lebanon to Syria in 1990, it is a truly remarkable reversal of fortune for Prime Minister Aoun to see George W. Bush (son) sign into law the SALSRA in December 2003. And now the final act in this long and sustained campaign with the upgrade of SALSRA from a strictly American instrument to UNSCR 1559, an international lever to dislodge Syria out of Lebanon.

Indeed, Prime Minister Aoun achieved this victory in the face of insurmountable odds. To begin with, he did not seek political office. In September 1988, Michel Aoun was appointed Prime Minister of a Transitional Government by then-departing President Amin Gemayel. The mission of that government was to prepare conditions suitable for the Lebanese Parliament to elect a new president, because – it will sound déjà vu and familiar – Parliament was unable to elect a new president because Syria was trying to impose its own puppet president. This was 1988! In contrast to last weeks’ uproar of a now conscientious international community over Syrian blatant meddling in Lebanese constitutional affairs, the international community, led by the US and France, then sided with Syria and against Prime Minister Aoun. The reasons are many, but suffice it to say that Sept 11, 2001 had not taken place, and terrorism – as practiced by Syria and its proxy terror organizations and militias – was still considered chic and romantic among liberal European and American circles! As we say in Lebanese, the razor blade had not gotten close to their beards. In contrast, the Lebanese, led by Prime Minister Aoun, were up to their eyeballs in chic Syrian, Palestinian and Iranian terrorism since 1974, and they had had it by 1988.

Even the US Envoy to Beirut at the time, Richard Murphy, joined the Syrian dictator in 1988 in threatening the Lebanese people, Prime Minister Aoun and those Lebanese MPs who opposed the Syrian diktat with “chaos” if they did not vote Mikhail Daher, Syria’s man, to the top executive post. The whole world was outraged at Prime Minister Aoun’s “uncompromising” attitude, and the international community orchestrated the Taef Accord that legitimized the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. The media, US and French diplomats, and anyone who was anyone then called PM Aoun a “renegade”, a “rebel”, a “Christian Warlord”, when he was merely the legitimate Prime Minister trying to do his job in 1989, which is exactly what UNSCR 1559 is now trying to do in 2004.

Even today in Lebanon, many of those claiming to be in the opposition continue to limit the scope of their so-called opposition to the extension of puppet Lahoud’s term, but make no reference to the root cause – the Syrian occupation and hijacking of Lebanon. This is typical of the bottom-feeding habits of the political, religious and feudal ruling class in Lebanon who never take any risk until the view is clear, because they have no vision or conviction. They wait for change, then align themselves behind the winning ticket. They continue to say they want to “implement Taef” even as Taef is dead and buried under UNSCR 1559. They continue to speak of “privileged relations” between Syria and Lebanon, even as Baathist Syria is collapsing under their own eyes. They continue to kiss the hand of their torturer, even as the latter stands finally indicted for the crimes he has committed. They are feeble opportunists who remained silent and collaborated with the enemy during the 1990s, but are now trying to ride the coattails of Prime Minister Aoun who led the victorious charge alone.

And so we come to this moment in our history. For now, Syria and its lackeys have less than 30 days to make up their minds and decide which side they are on. Any non-compliance with the will of the international community will be met with increasingly stiff and inimical relations with the West and the world at large. Unless the little ophthalmologist-turn-despot in Damascus abides by the demands of the resolution, he will have to face consequences that will ultimately lead to the coup-de-grace to the Baathist order in Damascus and the implosion of the terror infrastructure it has created in the region. This effectively means the complete capitulation of Syria, because the slap on the hand in Lebanon will resonate as a huge and potentially deadly blow inside Syria, and Syria will then begin capitulating on the full spectrum of issues that his and his father’s regime obstructed for decades, primarily a capitulation to a negotiated, but unfavorable, settlement with Israel on the Golan Heights.

How did Prime Minister Aoun achieve this victory for himself and for Lebanon? The short answer is in the simplicity and purity of his message. Since 1989, General Aoun brushed aside all other considerations to focus on the one fundamental and simple point: By any measure of international law and legitimacy, and by all measures of nationhood, Lebanon is a sovereign and independent nation. All other issues – internal disagreements on reforms, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, geopolitical considerations, conflicting ideologies of the Cold War, Pan-Arab and Pan-Syrian nationalisms, Islamic fundamentalism, Christian-Moslem relations, Iranian Shiite vs. Saudi Sunni conflicts, Iraq and Kuwait and the Gulf War, etc. – none of these issues should be used to detract the Lebanese from their basic right to be a free people living in a sovereign State. That focus had to be sharpened first in the minds of the Lebanese themselves who had become jaded and brainwashed into feeling guilty about rescuing their own country from the claws of terror and the horrors of war. Aoun achieved this by writing a weekly message (The Lebanese Bulletin – An-Nashra Al-Lubnaniyyah) to the Lebanese people in which he reminded them, week after week, of the root cause of their predicament. He kept pounding on the need not only to liberate Lebanon from occupation (at-taHrir), but also to free their minds (at-taHarror) from the antiquated mentality of submitting themselves to whoever is ruling them (Dhimmitude).

It was precisely that simple, clear and focused vision of an otherwise very complex array of factors enmeshed in the Lebanese crisis that made the message easy to understand. And from the clarity of vision, there was clarity of strategy and the means to implement it. This conviction was expressed as well in all venues and forums – Internet, radio and television interviews, the press, the weekly Nashra, and in speeches to those willing to listen. Ultimately, his arrival to Washington DC in September 2001 soon after the attacks on the US (which was a coincidence since he had finally obtained a visa in August after State Department repeatedly denied him a visitor’s visa during the 1990s even as he was invited by Congress) gave him the opportunity to directly confront the fossilized mindset of the US political establishment on the Lebanese issue.

Never, in the course of two decades that this writer has been in the US, had the New York Times written an editorial that supported the principle of Lebanese sovereignty exclusive of the “attenuating circumstances” that were always raised to justify the bleak status quo. But the New York Times did last Friday. The Syrian Baathist propaganda has many friends here in the US, and dominated the media through its mouthpieces, namely the American Task Force for Lebanon, the Syrian embassy, State Department arabists, the Lebanese puppet embassy, and all the for-hire think tanks on Syrian and Saudi dole and funded with the largesse of Lebanese collaborators Rafik Hariri and Issam Fares (The Fares Center at Tufts University in Boston, the James Baker Center at Rice University in Houston, and others). They fooled the media, Congress, and the political pundits into believing that the truncation of Lebanese sovereignty was necessary to accommodate the “attenuating circumstances”.

But Aoun persisted. The message was simple and pure. And he managed to transform his opinions and convictions into realities on the ground as far as public opinion and the political view that the US and the West had for Lebanon, and by doing that effect a dramatic shift in US policy on Syria and Lebanon.

Beyond the victory of the “renegade” General, UNSCR 1559 is also a victory for the Bush doctrine. The message of hope that the White House has been sending and repeating to the Lebanese people for the past year has been heard and will not be forgotten by the Lebanese-American community come the November elections. UNSCR 1559 complements the SALSRA and takes it to its natural next step. It also reaffirms previous UN resolutions, primarily 520, the difference being, however, that this time UNSCR 1559 was passed with Lebanese sovereignty alone in mind, and no other “attenuating circumstance”. There is no Israeli invasion (1982) or bombing of the South (1996), there is no PLO to be evacuated from Beirut (1982), there is no Syrian siege around Beirut as in 1978 and in 1981. There is only Lebanese sovereignty that needs to be restored, and General Aoun is the man who made it all possible.