Guns N Roses

On war, peace and sustainable development

I wanted to comment on what Akram Shayyeb, a March 14 M.P, said yesterday.

In reference to Hezbollah’s planned demonstrations and actions, Mr. Shayyeb said: “We will not respond to their bullets with roses”. Coming from someone who belongs to the PSP, a party with a past of armed warlordism, Mr. Shayyeb’s veiled threat has an eerie credibility that can send cold shivers down most Lebanese spines.

Was he wrong to make such a comment?

The conventional wisdom holds that war-weary Lebanese are instinctively nervous of anything that might bring back the dark days of war. Surely, they argue, a comment like Mr. Shayyeb will only make rumors of Lebanese factions arming more believable, and cause the Lebanese to fall back on their basic clan affiliation instincts.

Nevertheless, This blog was about to argue that Mr. Shayyeb said the right thing.

March 14 should have an internal conviction that If you want peace, you should be prepared for war. Unless a credible deterrence was in the offing, Hezbollah will only bully the Lebanese into more concessions, further away from the international community and closer to the “rejectionist” camp of Iran and Syria.
This is a war of nerves. Is Nassrallah really ready to use his war-ravaged supporters against the rest of the Lebanese, all for the sake of a “national unity government”? Is he seriously gearing up for another showdown?

….

I had all of the above on my mind. Yet this morning while going to work and listening to the news, I had my priorities mixed up and no longer wanted to talk about Lebanese politics..

On the news bulletin, I heard about a report that global warming could shrink the entire world economy by a fifth if nothing is done about it. The ensuing international crisis would be worse that the great depression in the thirties.

Later, in a different program, the BBC reported of a new dance club in the Netherlands that will be the world’s first “sustainable dance club”. The dancing floor of the club will be equipped in such a way that the dancing vibrations will produce enough electricity to power the club. Smart eih?

Such a different world we the Lebanese live in. You suddenly see your little Lebanese skirmishes in perspective. It is such a shame that the Lebanese political class and we the commentariat are so fixated on trivial power games and forget that the bigger ship, the world we live in, needs urgent attention. I am yet to see one mainstream Lebanese journalist write about global warming in a major newspaper.

We have to set our priorities straight, or even Mr. Shhayyeb’s proverbial rose will become too precious to throw away.