Every now and then, a public figure gets up to reconsider his previous positions on the Lebanese Civil War that erupted in 1975 and did not end until 1989. In saying that his generation had burdened Lebanon with more than it could bear, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam became the newest member of this club a few days ago.
His self-reflection attests to the commendable political culture he belongs to, as well as his personal integrity; “admitting to one’s mistakes is a virtue,” as our forefathers had put it, and to his credit, Salam acknowledged one or two other mistakes in his conversation with our colleague Ricardo Karam.
However, self-critical reassessments lose some of their value and impact when they are paired with a disclaimer that “our” mistakes should be balanced against those of “others.” Indeed, making comparisons, which is intimately associated with polemicism, takes something away from the action of critically reexamining one’s past actions, which is an effort to put one’s cards on the table and speak one’s conscience.
Nonetheless, it is more important to focus on how the intermittent reassessments of the 1975 war continue to emerge at a time when the Lebanese are undergoing a harrowing chapter of a conflict that has been coupled with a total lack of any reassessment whatsoever.
One could argue that it is too early for Hezbollah and those in its orbit to critically examine the “support war” and its repercussions. The magnitude of the suffering that has resulted from this war, however, heightens the appeal of skipping over certain stages or sprinting through them; meanwhile, Hezbollah’s denial and obstinacy suggest that there will be no reexamination of any sort, not now nor ever.
This allows for raising questions about how reflections regarding what happened in 1975 relate to the repudiation of any attempt to critically reflect on a more bitter and vicious war that was fought just a few months ago. It seems that there is a frailty inherent to the reassessments of the conflict that had erupted half a century ago, and that this frailty is among the incentives for wars’ recurrence in a manner that combines increasing depravity, peril, and costs with the total absence of any criticism of ourselves or our actions.
A reassessment of a war, if the intention behind it is to build a form of consciousness that prevents future conflicts, must address the themes of the war in question and draw conclusions with which to raise public awareness, especially among schoolchildren.
Death and destruction give us enough reason to despise war, but they are not enough to establish the alternative consciousness that is needed, especially since when we speak of wars in Lebanon, we are speaking of a state of war that has become something of a way of life, not a particular war with a fixed start and end date.
Here, it is essential to revisit the values and meanings that are often the first victims of conflict, and whose reaffirmation is the glue that keeps society’s aversion to war together and infuses into popular culture.
In the case of Lebanon, a shared definition of patriotism remains the gateway to both perpetuating conflict and ending it. That is because failing to define the boundaries of Lebanese patriotism leaves it vulnerable to misrepresentation and blurs the line between love of country and solidarity with causes that, while they may be righteous, fall outside the confines of the nation and the policy consensus that should be imposed on its members.
When these lines are blurred, patriotism becomes a source of strife that rips the nation apart, rendering it into several rival sectarian communities constantly vying for the upper hand instead of doing the work needed to reinforce unity. And we know, from many past episodes, that blurring the lines in this way is conjoined with the even more dangerous blurring of countries and interests.
Freedom is another virtue that the war swiftly did away with, and nothing can push back against war better than emphasizing it. The pluralism – political, partisan, media, and union – of the pre-1975 years was replaced by a state ideology, guarded by security apparatuses, that placed at the forefront “Lebanon’s Arabism,” the glorification of resistance, and the rest of the tiresome chorus.
The war also destroyed another virtue that combatants deeply despise for countering against violence: before 1975, the country had been a window to the more advanced world. That was made possible by – besides the freedoms the country offered – Lebanon’s modern education, which allowed the population to acquire foreign languages and skills sought by the market, and a publishing industry that translated global ideas and innovations.
The war was not without a role in eroding the notion of prosperity and the prospect of Lebanon’s sectarian communities coming together. Despite the many disparities and upheavals of Lebanon’s peacetime economy, it prospered and allowed for the emergence of a broad and growing middle class, placing it in the same category as the economies of Southern Europe.
However, nothing matters more, in reassessments of the war and its culture and in building society’s immunity against it, than developing a culture of peace and an aversion to violence of any kind. This is precisely what has been and continues to be ruled out by the longstanding dominance of a culture that glorifies resistance and fighting and celebrates death and bloodshed.
It is these values and notions that critical self-reflection is supposed to present as the antithesis of war and belligerent approaches to life. The intermittent reassessments have not done so, and this deficiency has, in solidarity with many other political and regional factors, paved our path to the current war.
If a radical reassessment of yesterday’s wars is averted, the specter of new wars – if not from beyond the borders then from within – will remain very much on the horizon of tomorrow. As for the elites that should be setting this radical reassessment in motion, they remain defiant in the face of what has happened and astonished by what could happen.