“WAILL”

To everybody who does not agree with what Sasa says, you can voice your disagreement but don’t use the stupid logic of “if you are Syrian, talk about what’s going on in Syria first”. Lebanese politics have direct effects on Syria, and when you criticize Lebanese politicians, it does not mean that you love their Syrian counterparts!

The Syrian government made a lot of horrible things in Lebanon and in Syria itself. I do hope that reform in Syria will not bring us politicians with blood on their hands, will not make us chose our leaders from a bunch of warmongers and militia leaders, who were involved in sectarian massacres, killings and assassinations!

Mr. Chahine, be reminded that your grandparents belonged to this “desert” when there was no Lebanon on the map.

3ashat Souria wa 3asha Lubnan.

If you had read my posts, you would have read my criticisms of Syria, just as you request. I am against all “assasination, opression, economic and political abuse” and that is why I am against Aoun. If you know anything about Lebanese history and deny that he profitted from murder then you are as bad as the opressors.

I’ve been to Syria, Damascus once and the cab driver advised me to take my hand off from behind my fiancee’s shoulder (because they’re watching, he said), so there goes your “social freedom”.

never going back obviously, and would never have in the first place if a stamp on my passport was mandatory (don’t want other nations to know i’ve been there, i still need to travel).

now, the reasons for my hostility:

- aoun’s motive in 1989 was to wipe out the Syrians. so your opinion, with all due respect, will not matter much to this Lebanese. he’s back with the same motive, but don’t worry, if he really was capable of it, your young passionate leader would have crashed his plane, burried it, and then some, long ago.

- reason number 2: anyone giving opinions about Lebanon, with a picture of bashar on his wall, should talk about assassination and oppression, economical and political abuse, and only after that will we hear what he comes up with, with all his three brain cells.

- you’re lucky that your desert has nothing interesting for the greedy western world, otherwise you’d be serving that world long ago because you gave enough reasons for them to iron it out, more so than the others. but unfortunately Syria makes Iraq and Iran look like wonderworlds.

- finally, I cannot ask you to be non-patriotic and not to love your country. but you’re very unlucky and blindfolded. Syria’s survival depends on sucking Lebanon’s blood, and your kind leader is bombing his way back. the future will tell whether your leader is dumb (by letting Lebanon slip away, thus forcing him to face his own nation’s problems, unemployment and others, for the first time in his life, or it’s all part of a scheme where they will be back more strongly, and less visibly. they knew the world was going to react when they blew our ex-PM on February 14.

- so Syria has the internet? no spying and beating up?

I’m off for the night.

Georges Chahine

My criticism is of Aoun, not of the Lebanese opposition. Nothing would make me more happy than to see the resignation of Emile Lahoud.

But to truly deal with the legacy of the war, Lebanon has to acknowledge the blood on the hands of men like Aoun. Aoun does not represent the opposition, he represents himself. How arrogant of him to walk back in to Beirut after the Lebanese finished their fight with each other, with Israel and with Syria and then to hail himself as the grandfather of the opposition.

Lebanon and Syria are the cultural giants of the Arab world. We, in Syria, need economic regeneration, and Lebanon is a great model to have. But just like Lebanese who say you aren’t Lebanese don’t talk about our country – I say to you, don’t tell us we need regime change, or we need to be more like your political system. We have a young modernising, passionate leader, and in time we will scrape out the dead wood who’ve been hanging around since the 1960s. There are already pressures for change at the low levels of the Ba’ath Party, and that wont stop.

But there’s also a lot that’s great. We have religious and social freedom, the cost of living is a lot less than Lebanon, and most of all we’ve had peace longer than any other Arab nation, and that’s something we’re going to jealously guard. And that’s why people like Aoun are an anacronism to me.