Can Aoun survive taking to the streets?

Can Aoun survive taking to the streets?
By Michael Young Daily Star staffThursday, November 30, 2006
On Monday evening, I witnessed an edifying spectacle at Sassine Square in Achrafieh. Now I'm beginning to wonder whether the Lebanese ever merited better than the boot of Syrian intelligence agents. At around 10:00 pm, I heard shouting from the Sassine intersection. I went down to have a look, and saw Lebanese Forces supporters on the one side and Aounists on the other separated by two cordons of Internal Security Forces and the Lebanese Army. The Aounists were trying to hang up a poster of Michel Aoun, to replace one that had been burned down by Lebanese Forces backers after the assassination of Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel. By midnight, the two groups were hurling insults at each other, and the army sent in truckloads of reinforcements to control the situation. There were more than enough soldiers present, as the warring packs could not have numbered more than 150 to 200 people.
The manifest stupidity of the incident makes one despair that Lebanon will ever be able to find genuine stability. After all the country has been through in two years, indeed in three decades, it is astonishing to still hear slogans redolent with mindless, brutish partisanship: "God, the Lebanese Forces, Doctor [Samir Geagea], and nothing else!" against "God, Lebanon, General [Michel Aoun], and nothing else!" And this from people who most likely work together, live together, and deal with each other on a daily basis. Nor is it enough to blame cretins who would brawl over the picture of one megalomaniac or another. Both Aoun and Geagea must be held responsible for the recklessness of their followers, even as the Lebanese, particularly Christians, really cannot be bothered once again to pay the bill for that pair's cold, destructive brinkmanship.
Part of the problem is generational. A majority of those most active in the streets, whether on the side of March 8 or March 14, are too young to clearly remember the carnage that took occurred between 1975 and 1990. That's why they behave so irresponsibly today. As novelist Jabbour Doueihy has bitingly put it, "they are heading toward war, singing."
The Christian community is divided - never unusual - but it's difficult to see why. The standard-issue Aounist is not so very different than the typical Lebanese Forces enthusiast. What keeps them apart are mainly the mutual antipathy of their leaders and their history of antagonism - but also a tendentious reading of that history. Whether it is Aoun or Geagea, both men have burnished a populist image, oftentimes verging on the demagogical. Divisiveness is their bread and butter.
However, for all the ambiguity that Geagea evokes because of his militia past, a past Aounists understandably cite in expressing their distaste for the Lebanese Forces, he is on the right side of the central issue affecting Lebanon today: defense of the country's sovereignty against Iran and Syria. Aoun, in his visceral hatred of a Hariri system that contributed to his exile and isolation, finds himself on the wrong side - on the side of those who would bring down the Siniora government to help press Iran's offensive against the United States in the region, and who would protect the regime in Damascus from the Hariri tribunal.http://www.dailystar.com.lb
Aoun's foolhardiness could prove devastating to Christians. Not for the first time, the general may be about to drive his partisans, and the community at large, into a brick wall. If a report in the Wednesday issue of the daily Al-Hayat is correct, the Free Patriotic Movement has agreed to kick off the protest movement against the government. Given the Sassine clashes, but given, too, the increasing polarization in the Christian community provoked by Gemayel's assassination, it doesn't take much to foresee that Aoun is sending his followers into battle.
If Aoun participates in the Hizbullah-led effort to force the government out, and all the signs are that he will, the question becomes, what does he gain from being perceived as a Christian fig leaf for a possible Hizbullah coup? The general's involvement is important, because neither Hizbullah nor Amal wants their campaign to be seen as solely a Shiite endeavor. But if Aoun agrees to be their vanguard, he stands to lose even more politically than he already has, from an action sure to heighten ambient animosities.
It could be too late for the Aounists. Once it takes to the streets, the opposition risks being discredited because its actions will be interpreted as blackmail by Sunnis, Druze, and many Christians. The government is not sufficiently unpopular for most Lebanese to endorse a weeklong lockdown of the state, as may be the case. Similarly, peaceful demonstrations could turn violent if the government resists resigning, which would again backfire on the organizers. And we haven't even mentioned the possibility of Sunni-Shiite ill feeling - now a serious problem in mixed areas of Beirut - and the likelihood that if the government feels threatened, March 14 would mobilize its own supporters for an explosive standoff.
If it's not too late, however, the Christians in March 14 must rapidly open new channels to the Aounists. This is easier said than done; the general is obstinate. But he is also surrounded by sensible people in his parliamentary bloc, even if their influence pales before that of Aoun's military comrades. At the street level, the March 14 approach to the Aounists must be exactly the opposite of what happened at Sassine. Instead of provoking them, leave them to face the consequences of their actions. Aoun is his own worst enemy. Build a safety net for his followers, but let the general hang himself with his own rope, if he insists on doing so.
Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY STAR.