The March on ( Rome) Beirut
Hazem Sagieh Al-Hayat
25/09/06

Our political culture is rich with expressions such as 'eternal victory', 'divinely-guided victory' and 'glorious victory'. In this respect, Saddam Hussein has innovated almost epic imageries, such as 'the mother of all battles', 'Saddam's Qadissiya', and others. As for 'godly victory', coined by Ali Khamenei in his letter congratulating Hassan Nasrallah and used by Hezbollah to describe the recent war and its consequences, it is a qualitative development in the dictionary of war eloquence.

Despite this, and because experience has taught us that the more victory was exaggerated, the more there was behind the scenes, it is likely that this 'victory' is hiding territorial desires and crises. It may be difficult to envision all the crises and desires, but it is clear that declaring 'victory' in this manner is meant to resolve unresolved debates and settle many open-ended issues. It is unacceptable to involve the sacred in such a situation, particularly as we see the Israelis, who have formed a government investigation commission and might form an official investigation commission, go in the opposite direction. They are moving from the sacred to the mundane, from the fixed to the mobile, and from certainties to questions. According to their media, their politicians and intellectuals, this can lead them to realizing the real lessons of the war.

The declaration of a 'godly victory' is a recipe to delay and suppress the debate and seize power or come close to seizing it. Legitimizing the use of such a declaration is easy only for a party that calls itself Hezbollah, because it implicitly entails that the others are the party of the devil. People like those should not be in power, and should not be able to facilitate the work of the court and the investigation regarding the assassination of Hariri, or to co-operate for the implementation of Resolution 1701. Even when they are moderate devils, such as the 'understander' Michel Aoun or the advocates of 'scientific socialism' who praise 'divine victory', their role should be limited to paving Hezbollah's passage to power.

It is known that the Ugandan rebels also have a 'Lord's Army', led by clergyman Joseph Kony, who is not too ashamed to do horrible acts, the most famous of which was abducting and whipping children. Such acts were thought to be the means to reach power in the capital. This, of course, is not the case with Hezbollah, which is a popular and serious phenomenon, distinguished from other Hezbollah parties established by the Iranians in many countries.

The elements of Hezbollah's power are very diverse and rich: a sect that was falsely made to believe that the rest of the Lebanese are targeting it, as well as the continuous resources of Iranian oil revenues. All this gives its radical threat to the Lebanese situation an obvious urgency.

Friday's festival does not hide the desire to end the disparity between a parliamentary majority and what is supposed to be a popular majority. Thus, we must remain vigilant and cautious. During the 1920s, the political elite in Italy were fragmented, the government was weak, and the democratic forces were scattered. Many people wanted a strong rule. The sense of absurdity and futility was rampant. The middle class' fear of communism was accompanied with lower classes nationalism. For those reasons, 50 thousand fascists were more than enough for Benito Mussolini to march on Rome.

They toppled the government and brought the Duce to the premiership. They were driven by a deep-rooted faith that they were the representation of the will of nature, while they represented in fact the Italians' frustration, the ambiguity of their future, and the emptiness of politics and their politicians. The nationalist faith of the fascists is the secular equivalent of the 'godly victory' celebrated by Hezbollah.