Tag Archives: Samir Geagea

Spare Us The Samir Geagea Hate

I told a civil war story last year that I made ambiguous on purpose to reach a certain conclusion, which was that everyone’s to blame for the Lebanese civil war if we really want to move the country forward.

However, I recently realized that Lebanese need a scapegoat for them killing each other. Their scapegoat was chosen to be Samir Geagea.

For some, Geagea killed them because they were of a certain religion, region, background, etc. For others, their sense of guilt kicks in and Geagea killed the aforementioned people because of their religion, region or background, as well as some of them who were “strong” enough to defy him.

The murderer! The liar! The assassin! The faithless! The abomination!

For many apparently, Samir Geagea was fighting the air during the Lebanese civil war. He was drawing his weapons against everyone but no one was drawing their weapons against him or his party.

For many it seems, Samir Geagea and his party were busy ruining the country all by themselves during the Lebanese civil war. No one else did anything worthy to be mentioned.

For many, the only war criminal of the Lebanese civil war is Samir Geagea. As if it’s possible for Samir Geagea to lead a whole civil war all by himself.

You defend Samir Geagea? You’re an accomplice to his murders. You complement him? They expected so much more of you. You admire him? You need to learn your history.

Because they know their history very well, I’m sure. Every single Lebanese now has a PhD in Lebanese civil war times and I was out of the loop. It’s sad.

The illusion that some people are innocent because they were legitimate needs to be removed. A bridge needs to be built and people need to get over that idea en masse. The fact that certain parties were violent to certain guests on our land can only be explained by the actions of those guests in a land that’s not theirs. The actions of certain parties cannot be taken out of the context during which they were carried out and treated as stand-alone events. It simply doesn’t make sense, regardless of how hideous those acts may be.

The civil war is an uncivil epoch.

No one in the civil war was a saint. If those involved had been as such, it wouldn’t be called a war and we would have had a very civil era. It’s far from being the case.

So let me put the situation today in the following manner.

If during the war your car was ruined? Blame Geagea. Your house was set on fire? Blame Geagea. You got stopped at a checkpoint? Blame Geagea. Your great-great-great-cousin, 2 degrees removed got killed? Blame Geagea.

Geagea barely escapes death? Blame Geagea. Anyone else barely escapes death? Blame Geagea.

Blame Geagea for everything – because that is the way we move forward.

If you’re one of those people who still consider the civil war in making their political choices today, then I pity you. If you’re one of those people who still need a scapegoat for your own mistakes just so you can please your conscience, I pity you.

Spare us the Geagea hate. Spare us the mindless, useless and retro attitude. If your mind is still in the civil war, perhaps getting it out of there is the first step towards building a country, instead of preaching about the importance of change and reform in moving Lebanon forwards.

Change and reform begin on the inside. Change your mentality. Reform your hate. And then come talk to me.

The ironic thing is that Geagea is the only one among all Lebanese political leaders today that went to jail for some of his supposed actions. Everyone else faced next to negligible consequences.

Tenzeker w ma ten3ad? At this rate, yeah right.

Tayyar.org: Not Sure If Tabloid or News Site

Tayyar.org is nowhere near my go-to site when it comes to Lebanese news (nor is Lebanese-forces.com for that matter). But you’d expect a self-proclaimed reputable website to at least be respectable enough not to post a picture like this on their Facebook wall:

To make things even more “appealing,” they had this news shared next to the picture calling the whole affair a “masra7iye” – Lebanese for play.

And then I remembered something: their timeline cover picture. So for reference, here it is:

Underneath their title, the words: Precision, Speed & Credibility are typed out. I really have no idea how a mocking picture of the head of one of Lebanon’s main parties can be considered as precise, speedy or credible.

I guess the admins who run that page and those who run the corresponding won’t stray much from the morals set by the leader they follow, nor are the people that follow said leader.

So for all matters and purposes, Tayyar.org is not a news website. It might as well call itself TayyarJaras.org – but wait, that would be degrading to Nidale el Ahmadieh’s tabloid. So let us tweak that a little bit and make it: TayyarJorsa.org – for yes, jorsa is what they are.

Some Lebanese Reactions to the Samir Geagea Assassination Attempt

Some people appall me.

I never for a moment thought people could make fun of a person narrowly escaping death. That is until Samir Geagea escaped an assassination attempt.

You’d think people would be more considerate. After all, I’m pretty sure if any one of those ridiculing the whole thing were in Geagea’s shoes, they probably wouldn’t have died because of the shots they would have dodged, they would have died because of the panic they’d be going through afterwards.

Instead, they’re busy manufacturing their own version of the story to conform with their sick, twisted, demented, useless, silly fantasy.

For some, Samir and Sethrida Geagea are just bored people in their fortress who decided to come up with a scenario to keep themselves entertained. Yes because entertainment can only come in 10 inch bullets and advanced sniper riffles.

For others, Samir Geagea is the new Neo from The Matrix, working his way around bullets as if they were nothing. They even created a meme for it. Some people just have way too much free time. And way too little courtesy.

Simply disrespectful and not even funny

For others, Geagea came up with his own assassination attempt because he’s politically bankrupt, whose followers are “idiots” (I’m quoting) without high-school diplomas. Yes because the argument is so flawless that I can’t fathom addressing the impeccable structure of it, you BS-holder you!

Others are seeing this as a pattern of Geagea’s lies, which started in 1990, wishing the bullet had hit its target. They would know about lies, I’m sure.

I’d like to see what those same people would have done if their leader was subject to Geagea’s assassination attempt. Odds are they wouldn’t be this humorous. But no, their leader would never be subject to an assassination attempt because he knows with whom to strike “protective” alliances.

So seriously, spare us your useless humor, your ridiculous attitude and your flawless logic. At the end of the day, what can you expect from people whose political reference is the Socrates of modern day logic?

And in case they still think it was a play, perhaps their very own minister Marwan Charbel describing the whole thing as a serious affair would be enough. Who am I kidding? It will never be enough.

Ridiculous people will forever be ridiculous. Glad to know the only way an assassination attempt could be considered as such by some people is for an explosion to happen and for the victim to lose a few limbs. But hold on, their leader doesn’t even consider those who went through such an ordeal as worthy of any recognition. And some of them were relieved Geagea hadn’t went down that road – not for humanitarian purposes, but because it would be a nuisance to have to deal with.

There’s a line between being critical and being downright retarded. You are strutting the retarded side magnificently… and to conclude it Lebanese-ly: TFEH!

Samir Geagea’s Assassination Attempt

Head of the Lebanese Forces narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in his house in Meaarab, Keserwein, earlier today.

While taking a stroll outside, Geagea heard gunshots. So he ran for a safe place only to find the spot he was standing at had two bullet holes.

The security of his house was not breached. But the attempt is believed to have been taken out using high-tech equipment that can establish a perimeter of up to 4 kilometers. The Lebanese army is currently sending its helicopters to search the woods surrounding the area for possible suspects but the dense forests make the task extremely difficult.

The team that tried to assassinate Geagea obviously knows what it’s doing and has possibly done it before.

Now I ask – are we back to the assassination period in Lebanon where every single politician that has the guts to speak out against certain factions and regimes gets shot down? Are we back to a time where some people think gunning down Lebanese top politicians will get the people to cower away and not fight for their rights anymore?

Samir Geagea is the only Lebanese politician whose opinions, since he got out of his forced imprisonment in 2005, haven’t spun like a weather vane. He’s the only Lebanese politician who has asked the people for forgiveness for anything his party might have committed during the civil war. He’s the only Lebanese politician who served jail time. He’s the only Lebanese politician nowadays whose rhetoric doesn’t cower away from telling things like they are. He’s the only Lebanese politician who doesn’t equivocate over his beliefs.

I never thought I’d be this upset with such news. Why? Because I never thought it would actually happen. But now that Geagea has been targeted for assassination, years after the latest figure in Lebanese politics was killed, I cannot but be disgusted by the cowards and the filth of society that have tried to kill such a man.

I address them directly because I know they’re reading this: you disgust me. If anyone needs to die, it’s you – your guns, your backward mentality and your fear of those who can speak out against you.

They know who they are.

Samir Geagea lives. And his resolve will only grow stronger. His supporters will only grow more determined.

On The Maronite Patriarch, Samir Geagea & Michel Aoun

Left: Michel Aoun, center: Patriarch Raï, right: Samir Geagea

When it comes to the Maronite Patriarch, Bechara Al Raï, I feel I have to be extra careful. The line between criticizing the individual and his stances is very thin and it is one I do not want to cross because he is, first and foremost, the head of a Church I feel proud to be part of for various reasons.

The leading Maronite politicians in Lebanon have found themselves at opposite sides of the aforementioned line. Being very kind-hearted, I’ll assume the line is very blurry for proper discrimination. But don’t be fooled, there’s a very important distinction between the stances Samir Geagea took regarding the current Patriarch and those adopted by Michel Aoun towards the former one.

The year is 2005.

Michel Aoun is preparing a parliamentary bid with an almost exclusively Christian coalition of political forces. At the end of May 2005, Aoun has gotten a sizable portion of the Christian votes – 70% in some areas. The patriarch at the time, Nasrallah Sfeir, had openly endorsed Aoun for trying to bring Christians together under a political idea that was, at the time, opposite to the alliance that included Hezbollah.

The year is 2006.

Michel Aoun signed an agreement with Hezbollah as the latter slowly drifted away from the electoral alliance it had forged a few months earlier. The agreement served to create a “Christian cover” for Hezbollah’s arms. It backfired. Aoun’s popularity began to slip, whether his followers like to admit it or not. The patriarch, following the political doctrine Bkerke has always been known for, began to criticize Aoun’s drastic shift in political positions. Subsequently, Aoun began to attack the patriarch both on personal and political levels. The attacks ended in 2011 when Sfeir resigned and Bechara Al Raï took over.

The year is 2012.

Samir Geagea is being interviewed on a political talk show, Bi Mawdou3iye, on MTV. He declares that the recent pro-Syrian stances of the Maronite Patriarch do not represent the historical path Bkerke had drawn for itself. He also asserted that the position of Bkerke as a leader in Lebanese society has dramatically decreased as a result of the erroneous stances taken by the patriarch.

Moreover, commenting on recent declarations by a mufti in KSA that the Arabian peninsula should not have any church standing in the near future, he replied that the stances coming out from the Azhar are the ones to be considered as legitimate and that the xenophobic declarations of Saudi Arabia’s mufti are very similar in crude nature to what the Patriarch had said about him being afraid for the Christians of the East because of the Islamists rising around us.

The time is now.

I am faced with a torrent of people sharing certain articles about how Samir Geagea is a hypocrite in criticizing the patriarch. And it is here that I bring back the initial point I mentioned in this post: there’s a thin line between criticizing a person, which Michel Aoun flagrantly did for years, and criticizing a person’s stances, which Samir Geagea has been doing for the past year.

It is a very thin line but it exists. And you cannot compare both men with regards to how they behaved towards the Maronite Patriarch without taking that into consideration. The fact of the matter remains that when Samir Geagea’s pardon went through and he was released out of prison in July 2005, the months when Patriarch Sfeir and his party had been at odds were not marred by discordance.

The fact of the matter remains that even when Samir Geagea is in grave disagreement with the current patriarch, his critiques cannot but be considered respectful. Or need I remind people of “the patriarch must have gotten horny” comment by one of Michel Aoun’s allies, a statement which was not condemned by Aoun’s party, or when the patriarch was called senile by Michel Aoun’s close entourage, a statement that the General did not, also, condemn.

The fact of the matter remains that the patriarch, with his current stances, is not helping to elevate the position of the Church he was appointed in charge of. Many bishops have even expressed discomfort in the way he is handling things. Patriarch Raï might be taking the power his congregation vested in him for granted. You cannot simply support the regime of a man who has been killing your people for years and years and expect then not to react negatively. You cannot expect your congregation to fathom supporting one of the main reasons their role in Lebanese society has degraded this substantially and pretend as if the years of Syrian occupation had never happened.

The difference between Michel Aoun and Samir Geagea goes back to principles. One has principles, the other simply lacks them. One expected Bkerke to change the way he saw fit and was disappointed when it didn’t. The other was disappointed as Bkerke strayed from the principles it built for hundreds of years and used to cement itself as a champion for the rights of Maronites in particular and Lebanese in general.

After all, how can we forget when Aoun’s supporters stormed Bkerke in a riot years ago? And they have the audacity to criticize Geagea for speaking up.

Yet again, people tend to jump the boat of hype without looking at the underlying current. But every now and then, a slight nudge of their memories is in order.

Can we move on now?