There are few moments in our lives that demand of us to delve deep into our beings and seek answers to that simultaneous sense of great fear and great promise. The international crisis precipitated by the issue of the disarmament of Iraq and the divergent opinions on what to do about it is one of those moments. We watch the choreography of ambassadors at the UN, the chanting of the crowds in the street, the images of soldiers on battleships, and of ordinary people in the streets of Baghdad. And as we wait for the final curtain, I see this moment laden with both fear and promise. Fear of the unknown, but hope for the promise that follows. I am reminded of the collapse of the Soviet Union and communism, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the freedom revolutions that were ushered in Eastern Europe.
I came of age in Beirut during the Lebanese War, which often comes back to my mind in punctuated flashes of memory. I was two blocks away from the two events of April 13 in Ain-Remmaneh. The massacre and exodus of the people of Damour at the hands of the Syrian and Palestinian forces in that cold and miserable winter of 1976. The killing of our 5-year old neighbor Maggie Abou-Jaoude by a single unprovoked shell fired on that beautiful summer day by the Palestinian-Syrian forces from the other side of the mountain and which came crashing on the children playing in the square of the village where we had sheltered for a few months that year. The escape back to Beirut where we thought the tall buildings would be safer shields against the shells than open mountainsides. The brutal sieges of Beirut by the Syrian Army in 1978 and 1981 and the days on end living in the basement. The endless shuttling between East and West Beirut to work and school. The daily death toll, the barricades, the hooded men at the checkpoints, the bodies. The many houses and apartments we stayed in as we fled from place to place seeking shelter from the storm. The Israeli invasion and the massacres at Sabra-Shatila, the killing of the US Marines, the kidnappings of US hostages, the car bombs, the War of Liberation and the hundreds of thousands of people rallying for freedom around Prime Minister Aoun’s government, and the final assault by Syria in October 1990 on this last free government that Lebanon has had since. In those 30 years, no country in the Middle East, including Lebanon, was allowed to reach its moment of truth in history and turn a brand new page full of promise and hope of a better future. For the Lebanese people, the opportunity turned into an extension of the nightmare and a fall into greater and greater despair.
The coming days will certainly usher a moment of truth in the Middle East, a moment of simultaneous fear and promise whose climax no one can predict, but which will certainly be of a magnitude not seen since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Then, the map of the Middle East was drawn at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, when some old nations were confirmed in their new borders, some new countries were created out of disparate populations and national groups, and where some nations were denied their right to self-determination behind safe borders.
For the people of Iraq, they will have to navigate their lives through unprecedented upheavals the likes of which they have not seen since Saddam Hussein seized power in Iraq close to 40 years ago. Yet there is also great promise for renewal, for a new order, and new beginnings. The promise of freedoms, democracy, civil liberties, openness and acceptance. Deep down they know they can handle these things. They are an ancient people who built some of the world’s earliest human civilizations. They scorn those condescending Westerners who say that removing the tyrant Saddam Hussein will bring anarchy and chaos to Iraq, for like every one else, the Iraqi people prefer a life of uncertain freedom to a life of certain oppression. The human spirit is universal. Like people anywhere else on the planet, the Iraqi people understand that with liberty and democracy come an acceptance of risk and the challenge of constant but civil conflict of ideas.
For the American people, the fear is of a long and protracted war, body bags, and endless conflict in a far-flung place. Fear of causing harm to another people. Fear of not knowing what to do after the bombs stop. Yet, the promise is in fulfilling a sense of responsibility that citizens of a superpower always had throughout history. With power and authority come responsibility and accountability. The empire that America has become is inseparable from the obligation to project that empire, to implement its natural consequences. This is a responsibility that they owe to themselves, to their country, and to the rest of the world. To take the moral high ground and assume the charge of changing the course of history for the right reasons.
For the Lebanese people, the fear is that they may not have tamed the monster within. The fear that the enemy has convinced them that they are not a grown-up nation and that they cannot run their lives. And again, having lost so much except hope, there can only be promise in the deposition of an Arab dictator. For the people of Damour, for the people of South Lebanon, for the people of Beirut, for the reporters who died for their words, for the hostages who gave many years to an often unforgiving land, to Maggie and all the children whose bodies are riddles with bullets, to the soldiers of the Lebanese Army who have the dignity and bravery to tolerate the intolerable for their country, and for the long years of internal exile where we lived in fear of ourselves and of our inability at changing our condition. Like the Iraqi people, the people of Lebanon are proud of their ancient history and of their survival against many foreign invader and conqueror.
At the end of WWI, the Paris Peace Conference established new countries out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. States were created where none existed before, and institutions were put in place. The cycle must now be closed by removing the despots and warlords who hijacked these states and institutions, and giving the peoples of these countries the support they need to now own and manage these institutions and their own lives.
To all the stakeholders in this impending upheaval, ponder the following quotes. With the poet Aboul-Qasem Al-Shabi “Iza ash-sha’bu yaouman arada al-hayat, fa la budda an yastajiba al-qadar” (If the people one day reach for life, destiny has no choice but to respond). With Charles de Gaulle, “Les raisonables ont duré, les passionnés ont vécu” (The reasonable ones endure, but the passionate ones live). To those who march against war, hear Martin Luther King Jr. say “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity”. And finally, with Nikos Kazantsakis, I say to myself everyday “I expect nothing. I fear no one. I am free.