With our steady history as the people of an uninterrupted
6,000-year old Lebanese civilization and heritage, and in our
desire to preserve our identity and origins in this heritage, we
are keenly aware of the dangers lurking against it and against
its values and freedoms. Lebanon was, and will continue to be,
an oasis of freedom and a mountain of pride for whose sake our
ancestors never tired of struggling through the ages.
Lest others forget, the Christians of Lebanon have always been
sovereign, free and secure about their destiny and their
heritage, even under persecution and at the cost of martyrdom,
carrying their message of the Gospel amidst the violence of the
surrounding Near East, never wanting for themselves what they
would not want for the other spiritual and cultural communities
that make up the Lebanese nation. Never wanting to monopolize
the building of their nation, they would rather build it
together, defend it together and share in the shaping of its
policies and the organization of its administration, all
together, resident and émigrés, across the globe.
We
address ourselves to the people and administration of the United
States of America with whom we share democracy and its values,
the values of liberty and one mankind, with the trust and hope
that they will be more understanding and fair to our cause.
How can they not be, when Lebanese immigrants to these shores
have contributed effectively to the building of the American
nation in all cultural, economic and political arenas, when
there are 22 cities and towns bearing the name of Lebanon in
these United States, and when Lebanon co-authored the Charter of
the Rights of Man of the United Nations, which both countries
uphold.
We
address ourselves to you to ask you to make your conscience the
criterion by which you measure your actions because one ought
never fail to be witness to the truth. We hold the conviction
that you share some of the responsibility for what has become of
Lebanon:
In
1969, when there was no effective action on your part to oppose
the Cairo Accord which, under intense Arab pressure, handed the
south of Lebanon to the Palestine Liberation Organization.
In
1975-1976, when the war against the existence of Lebanon began
with the goal of replacing it with a substitute State for the
Palestinians, your envoy Mr. Dean Brown proposed to
then-Lebanese President Frangiyeh to deport the Christians of
Lebanon and you turned a blind eye to the entry of the Syrian
occupation forces into Lebanon. The Christian resistance rose to
fight both the settlement of the Palestinians in Lebanon and to
reassert the existence of the Lebanese nation.
In
1983, you stood idle watching the massacres of Christians in
Mount Lebanon at the hands of Walid Jumblatt and his Palestinian
and Syrian allies. You did not thing; you said nothing.
The
revolution of March 14 did not start in 2005; it was always our
objective, and the Cedars Revolution was the core of our cause.
You stood against the War of Liberation of 1989 by the
government of General Michel Aoun, and you actively promoted
infighting between elements within the Christian enclave, then
gave the green light to the Syrian Army to complete its invasion
and occupation in 1990. We stood alone on behalf of liberty
facing the treason of the Free World against us, undeterred by
the enormity of the sacrifices we made. The Taef Agreement which
you co-sponsored and promoted did not stipulate clearly and
specifically a timetable for the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon;
yet you knew full well the modus operandi of the Syrian regime
and what it stood to do to our deeply-rooted democracy.
Yet, our faith never faltered despite the false promises and the
bitterness of disappointment and treason. The Syria
Accountability Act in the US Congress was soon followed by UN
Security Council Resolution 1559, and the Syrian withdrawal came
15 years too late, but we saw a glimmer of hope. However our joy
– and our dream – was incomplete, as the US Administration did
not agree to postponing the legislative elections in 2005, not
even briefly to allow a consensus to emerge on a new electoral
law which would not be prejudicial to a genuine Christian
representation in Parliament and which would replace the Ghazi
Kanaan-Rafik Hariri Law, which had been tailored under the
occupation to serve Syria’s interests and its agents in Lebanon.
The
false democracy that emerged from those elections is a form of
dictatorship which has marginalized the Christians and denied
them a genuinely free role in rebuilding Lebanon’s democracy.
The government’s policy vis-à-vis the Christians did not change
as we transitioned from the Syrian occupation to the
post-occupation period, and the true representatives of the
Christians were denied a place in the government. Then we saw a
revival of fundamentalist organizations that do not even
recognize Lebanon as a nation, with the government issuing them
permits and licenses, in violation of the Pact of Shared
Coexistence. Moreover, it is commonly felt by the Christians
that this government is deliberately engaged in a policy of
economic neglect to starve the people and push them into
emigration. Do not be their partners in our forced emigration.
How
can you even consider contributing to the rebuilding of Lebanon
in partnership with yesterday’s collaborators with the
occupation? How can we feel reassured by the role you play when
your allies are the enemies of the values we both believe in?
Your allies are the same people who pilfered and squandered the
Lebanese Treasury into a $50 billion debt. You extend a hand to
the butcher of Mount Lebanon who practiced ethnic cleansing much
like the butchers of the Balkans and whose hands are drenched
with the blood of the innocent in Lebanon, while you drag the
others to the International Court in The Hague for prosecution.
You welcome them in the White House. Doesn’t that put a blemish
on your credibility?What would the standing
of people like them before American Justice?
For
many years the United States took it upon itself to place
Lebanon under Syrian tutelage, and today you are replacing this
tutelage with Political Harirism, a product of the Wahhabi
School that is ignorant of the principles of partnership and
sharing and coexistence. You supported this Salafist school in
Afghanistan in the so-called “Mujahideen for Freedom” against
the Soviet Union, only to be the recipient of their gratitude
with the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. What makes you
think, erroneously, that your interests can only be secured by
denying the Christians a sovereign and free existence? If there
is a will, we know very well that the power of your diplomacy
can reconcile masterfully and simultaneously between our free
and dignified existence as authentic champions of Western values
on one hand, and your vital interests in this East on the other.
The
essence of our existence is rooted in a unified humanistic world
civilization, and the dialogue between civilizations and
religions will not bear fruit without the presence and effective
role of a free and vibrant Christian presence in Lebanon and the
East. We have refused and we will continue to refuse, we have
confronted and we will continue to confront all attempts at
uprooting us, subjugating us, marginalizing us, and implanting
the Palestinians in our homeland. We ask that you not be the
obstacle to a solution in the land of the Biblical Cedars, for
there can’t be peace in the Middle East without peace in
Lebanon.
Our
banner has always been, and will continue to be, a Lebanon that
is a bastion of freedom and a beacon to the East. Do not
participate in undermining that bastion and snuffing out that
beacon because we believe that you will wake up one day and
behold the heroism of our historic – and often tragic –
endurance in defense of values that are our values as much as
they are yours.