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Speech of Mr. Stephen Stanton -
Cedarwatch
“Lebanon Cedar Revolution Solidarity Day”
May 10th, 2005 – The Capitol, Washington DC
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It is a truly humbling experience to be able to
address this gathering here today under the auspices
of US Congressman Thaddeus McCotter, a member of the
US House Sub-Committee on the Middle East.
Cedarwatch thanks Congressman McCotter, Congresswoman
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Congressman Eliot Engel for
the convening and launching of the Lebanon Cedar
Revolution Solidarity Day in Washington, DC on May 10,
2005 - a day that will be remembered in Lebanon's
history.
The purpose of this gathering is not only to
commemorate those who have fought for Lebanon and in
some cases paid with their life, but also to highlight
the plight of the Lebanese populace and, in particular
the imprisoned leader Dr Samir Geagea who remains
incarcerated in solitary confinement despite all
attempts, it would seem at this stage, thwarted deftly
by Syria's stalwart puppet, the Speaker of the
Lebanese Parliament, Mr Nabih Berri.
The Resolution that we are here to consider and to
applaud, is not only a testament to the courage of the
Congressman, but also to the Middle East Sub-Committee
and the whole of the US Congress in taking their
responsibility in terms of foreign policy to ensure
the dissemination of democracy, justice and truth
throughout the world where it is warranted. It also
highlights the pariahs that still exist within the
Lebanese government at Syria's behest.
Mr Berri's decision, to unilaterally use his powers as
speaker, under the Constitution is nothing more than a
personification of the pitiful power politics that
Lebanon has descended into, both under Syria's
tutelage and more importantly since its departure,
thus enabling it to still exercise its hand even
without its distinct presence. Mr Berri, from the
Amal faction of the Shiite party is what many Lebanese
have come to understand of politicians from
Hezbollah's rival, that they act as corrupt
deal-makers, practising tribal-style quid pro quo
politics. In this case, at the request of Mr Omar
Karami, who would seek to have the memory of his late
brother, the assassinated Prime Minister Rachid Karami,
utilised as a stumbling block for the restoration of
democracy and national reconciliation so necessary and
so vitally overdue by ensuring the continued
incarceration of Dr Samir Geagea, while all other
leaders have either been welcomed, in terms of their
repatriation to Lebanon or are openly in dialogue with
each other as a united opposition.
The most extreme exemplification of such hypocrisy is
the welcome to Lebanon of General Michel Aoun, who has
had the benefit of a judicial finding that all or any
crimes with which he was charged have since been the
subject of an acquittal, while Geagea's numerous
miscarriages of justice, even to the extent where
people have openly acknowledged he was not guilty and
have since expressed their remorse that he was so
found guilty, still require that he remain in solitary
confinement, wrongly convicted and more importantly
wrongly imprisoned.
Again, a clear case of such a realisation that Geagea
was wrongly convicted is the statement by Mr Dory
Chamoun that the assassination of his brother,
sister-in-law and nephews and nieces was at the hands
of the Syrian regime and not Dr Geagea. Equally in
this vein is Walid Jumblatt's statement that Syria was
responsible for his father's assassination.
It is against this background of a manifestation of
the indiscreet charm of tyranny, albeit subtly
exercised through Syria manipulating two of its more
mundane marionettes in the person of Mr Omar Karami
and Mr Nabih Berri, that this Resolution must now be
considered.
The Resolution that we have both embraced and rejoice
in its enactment here today is an affirmation that US
foreign policy is both sensitive to and conscious of
the need for constructive morality and we applaud the
US House Sub-Committee on the Middle East and its
distinguished members assembled here today.
The Resolution graciously, but nevertheless
vigorously, calls for the restoration of sovereignty
and independence to Lebanon and also for the immediate
release of political prisoners such as Dr Samir Geagea.
How timely is such a Resolution, bearing in mind
events of the Lebanese parliament on Saturday, 7 May
2005 which shall surely stand as a day of infamy in
the history of Lebanon.
It is often said that morality in foreign policy is
like snakes in Ireland: there aren't any.
This Resolution is a proper embodiment of the fact
that such a foreign policy as the United States has so
seriously pursued throughout the Middle East is one
that is, in the context of this Resolution, couched in
compassionate, generous forgiving, humane, honest,
tolerant and, not least, a consistent equality in the
treatment of all of Lebanon's citizens.
This Resolution stands as a notable example of what
this House has come to be famous for in the history of
the free world. In short, one looks to such
pre-eminent scholars as George Kennan who, when
speaking of the need for morality in foreign policy,
said as follows:
"Let me explain. The interests of the national
society for which government has to concern itself are
basically those of its military security, the
integrity of its political life and the wellbeing of
its people. These needs have no moral quality ...
They are the unavoidable necessities of a national
existence and therefore not subject to classification
as either ‘good' or ‘bad'."
The Resolution so promulgated is a perfect example of
what is a reflex to responsible foreign policy.
Again and again commentators have urged the need for
foreign policy to have a responsible dialect, as did
President Woodrow Wilson who, in 1917, said as
follows:
"We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be
insisted that the same standards of conduct and
responsibility for wrong shall be observed among
nations and their governments that are observed among
the individual citizens of civilised states."
In a similar vein, with a sharper focus on the need to
ensure that society had the benefit of the care and
concern of foreign governments towards each other and
the citizens of the world are the comments of Hedley
Bull, one of Australia's and Oxford's most
distinguished scholars, who made this comment on the
need for Resolutions such as the one we are privileged
to speak to today, when he said:
"For the Kantians it was only at a superficial and
transient level that international politics was about
relations amongst states at all; at a deeper level it
was about relations among human beings, of which
states were composed. The ultimate reality is the
community of mankind, which existed potentially, even
if it does not exist actually ..."
This Resolution is an exquisite exemplification of
American power being used to, as Deputy Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz recently said:
"[To] release basic human desires to be free and
prosperous and live in peace."
Congressman McCotter and his colleagues have shown
quite dutifully that their perception of their office
as the elected representatives of the people of the
United States is to be a trustee, first and foremost,
of the manner in which their country's foreign policy
is conducted. In that regard, as agents and trustees
their first and overriding responsibility is not to
give expression to their own moral views or
preferences, but to secure the interests of those they
serve. This Resolution justly fits that purpose and
realises that need in serving the aims it laudably
extols.
The Congressman and his colleagues have ably shown
that they have subordinated all vexations in the
interests of attaining and achieving the interests of
their own country and the Lebanese people, for whom
the United States has perceived a need to ensure that
they are accommodated from the ravages of tyranny and
civil war and that their homeland should be free and
sovereign yet again.
The members of the US Sub-Committee on the Middle East
have ably shown in the passing of this Resolution that
they have upheld the ethic of responsibility that Max
Weber maintained was one that was appropriate to
political life. They have shown that their
responsibility as political leaders is for the
wellbeing of their people and the health of their
state, the two always not so easily coinciding, yet
they have ably brought about such a coalescing of that
duality in their political life in the passing of this
Resolution.
As a Resolution it inevitably enhances the ideals that
it cannot attain as its ultimate goal, a perfection or
a Utopian bliss, but it has the hallmark of decency.
It is, more often than not, a morality of the lesser
evil, of prudence, and for that reason is to be
praised.
Edmund Burke said of prudence that it is: "... not
only the first in rank of the virtues, political and
moral, but ... is the director, the regulator, the
standard of them all."
The Congress and its US Sub-Committee on the Middle
East has never attended to prudence as an exercise in
timidity. In some circumstances it demands firmness,
even boldness, in dealing with problems early, while
they are still manageable. In other cases, such as
the Resolution and the need to address the
circumstances in point, it still comes at a time when
its intervention in the form of its passing is both
timely and necessitous.
This Resolution highlights and emphasises the
prudential ethic of placing importance on those
virtues of order and stability of which it bespeaks in
sombre and sensible tones. The Resolution admirably
seeks, as a necessary condition for Lebanon,
everything that the achievement and smooth functioning
of a restoration to democracy requires, in particular
a degree of predictability and continuity, a system of
justice and sustainable democratic government with
just, free and open elections. It also exhorts the
Lebanese government to ensure that the boundaries
under which these elections are to be held at the end
of May will be justly and truly proportional to the
interests of all electors.
It goes without saying that the courage and the
concern of the members of the US Sub-Committee on
Middle East Affairs is laudably emboldened in the true
spirit of this Congress and the manner in which it has
deliberated since its formation after the War of
Independence.
The members of this Congress Sub-Committee on the
Middle East have taken to their task with courage and
a consistency in the promulgation of principles for
which this august Chamber has been a beacon on the
headland, in terms of the proliferation of democratic
ideals throughout the free world.
In the words of the late Isaih Berlin:
"If, as I believe, the ends of men are many and not
all of them are in principle compatible with each
other, then the possibility of conflict - and of
tragedy - can never be wholly eliminated from human
life, either personal or social. The necessity of
choosing between absolute claims is then an
inescapable characteristic of the human condition."
This Resolution justly embodies such a realisation -
it is not lost on this Congressional Committee that
the Cedar Revolution witnessed recently in Lebanon
has, like the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine, given
heart to the fact that foreign policy directives as
have been engaged and embraced by this House in the
past are still welcome, and more importantly needed,
by those aspirants who thirst for justice and
democracy.
Like the Ukraine, the recent events in Lebanon have
imprinted themselves on the political consciousness of
the world and more importantly the US Congress. The
Cedar Revolution, like the Orange Revolution in the
Ukraine, came in a sequence of peaceful, democratic
revolutions, stretching from the "Velvet Revolutions"
of 1989 in Central Europe, through the Rose Revolution
in Georgia in 2003, culminating in the Cedar
Revolution in Lebanon. This Resolution is sensitive
to the needs of what was paramount and manifest in the
Lebanese demonstrations held on March 14, 2005 which
was the response of the ordinary people.
Like the Orange Revolution, the Cedar Revolution was
not made in Washington, or imposed by the United
Nations or by Brussels. What this Resolution does is
to aid the citizens of the Lebanon to do what they
have wanted to do for themselves.
The events of March 14, 2005 contrasted to the recent
deliberations in the Lebanese parliament when the
power of one man, the Speaker, have again shown that
tyranny is still present in the Lebanese political
landscape and more importantly, Syria's tyranny, have
highlighted what this Resolution gives hope for,
namely the power of the people to take control of
their own destiny.
The Resolution that we have now before us, and which
we are truly honoured to be witnesses to here today is
as the African Revolutionary, Thomas Sankar, once
said, will enable Lebanon to again have autonomy and,
after all, what is autonomy? "Autonomy is the right
to invent one's own future".
Looked at again, this Resolution enables the taking of
the control of Lebanon's own life politically, to
enable her citizens to devise a system through which
it, as a community, can organise themselves and to
install and participate in a direct democracy, with
full participation by all of her citizens, regardless
of their sectarian adherence, thus enabling a
democratic renewal. In short, it enables the Lebanese
people to re-invent themselves politically. The
United States has, in recent times, utilised its
National Endowment for Democracy and particularly to
great use in the Middle East.
As your President, Mr George W. Bush, has opined
recently:
"Sixty years of western nations excusing and
accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East
did nothing to make us safe."
The transformation that the US intervention has
realised in the Middle East has often gone unsung or
fails to receive the just praise it deserves. One
only needs to look to the pro-democracy students who
defy the clerical regime vigilantes in Tehran, the
persecuted founders of the Syrian Human Rights
Society, the hundreds of Saudis arrested for
participating in Riyadh's first human rights
demonstration, all testified to the readiness of
courageous individuals to assert their rights in
climates of repression and fear.
Further examples of people who have paid the ultimate
price for their boldness are Mansour Al-Kikhia, the
former Lybian Foreign Minister and a co-founder of the
AHRO, who was ‘disappeared' in Cairo by Gaddaffi's
henchmen in 1993. Who could not remember Yousef
Fathallah, the President of Algeria's Human Rights
League, who criticised both Islamist terrorists and
the military authorities, and was assassinated in
1994. Again, who could fail to give due deference to
the Iranian poet Mohammad Mokhtari, an eloquent
defender of freedom of speech, who was murdered during
a killing spree instigated by hard line elements in
the Revolutionary Guard in late 1998.
Finally, who can forget the late Rafiq Al Harriri who
was assassinated on February 14, 2005, a martyr to
freedom and one of the spores of the Cedar
Revolution. In these circumstances Samir Geagea again
remains incarcerated. Unlike Aoun, who was cleared
with the swift yet decisive stroke of a pen, Geagea's
continued incarceration is a testament to his
particular position, which unlike other Lebanese
leaders who have been welcomed back from exile to a
full and uninterrupted repatriation of their political
activities, his presence and his potential is
obviously far too discomforting to the regime in
power. In short, his imprisonment represents a
nemesis like the fabled journey of Ulysses.
It is a time of both anxiety and hope in Lebanon.
When once again the forces of darkness represented by
Berri and Karami are acting on the dictates of Assad,
who just cannot let go, it seems.
One is reminded to remark whether Mr Max Rodenbeck,
writing in the "New York Review of Books", in its
edition April 28, 2005, in the article "A New
Lebanon", got it right when he said:
"But the assassination of Rafiq Harriri has left it
[Lebanon] with no leaders to match the stature of
Hassan Nasrallah, for example. Such figureheads as it
has are, in many cases, tainted by their Civil War
pasts."
Mr Rodenbeck put pen to paper too early. He
overlooked Samir Geagea and the fact that in him the
Lebanese have now been able to settle the core
question of identity. They have now been able to
achieve a shared sense of belonging. The children of
the Cedar Revolution have been advocating Samir
Geagea's release and, despite having been temporarily
obfuscated by Berri, have shown a common pride and a
common vision. Berri is, along with Karami and the
other faceless felons who lurk within the Lebanese
government carrying out Syria's work in continuing to
incarcerate Geagea, a manifestation of the sectarian
hotheads and saboteurs that certainly still lurk in
the shadows. They will not succeed.
This Resolution is the chance, the light at the end of
the tunnel as it has emerged, that all Lebanese yearn
for. It is a building block upon the cornerstone of
the Lebanese themselves to help them rebuild their
nation. It like Samir Geagea will not be lost to myth
or the mists of memory.
S.J. STANTON
Cedarwatch
10 May 2005
