On Blaming Syria

If one’s quest for truth does not contain an element of uncertainty, it must be flawed.

I just read an article by the Daily Star’s Mark Sirois which more-or-less equates the “knee-jerk” blaming of Syria after each terrorist attack with the old ways of blaming Israel for everything that goes wrong. To many, that’s quite a paradigm shift.

Of course, Mr. Sirois’ argument is not that Syria has nothing to do with the string of bombings that killed many anti-Syrian figures in the last two years; it’s that the Lebanese have a habit of rushing to conclusions that are based on prior convictions. As he puts it: “a rush to judgment can be off-base or incomplete even if the facts, when logically analyzed, seem to support it”

In the article, Mr Sirois also explained a very important Lebanese concept, what he termed the tradition of dueling narratives: “In this process, each important event that takes place is filtered through a given camp’s worldview, and what emerges is a theory that appears to support that party’s arguments, claims and predictions — and, tacitly or implicitly, to blame the other side for whatever has happened.”

As a blogger who cut his teeth in the Cedar revolution, I believe in my gut that it is Syria who’s behind the attacks. I also admire and respect the people who believe so. But I also think that it’s a disservice to truth and to critical thinking to completely deny the other possibilities, no matter how strongly we feel about our own convictions. 

I was surprised at how many people reproached me because of the previous post, in which I mentioned the different theories of who killed Mr. el Hajj. Apparently, my crime was that I was creating a “moral equivalence” between the different ideas. I disagree.

The quest for truth is not the only reason why one should open one’s mind to other ideas. There is another, more pragmatic reason: By accepting the existence of other possibilities, one can create a psychological space for a sane discussion with the people who have different points of view. Since it is open mindedness and debate, not stubborn convictions, that are at the heart of a liberal democracy, maybe it’s not such a bad idea after all.