The Guardians of the Cedars Party issued the following weekly communiqué:

Arab Summits: Just a Media Fanfare

Perhaps the political circles in Lebanon are visibly interested in the upcoming Arab summit in Damascus and are eager to be invited to participate. But unlike their politicians, the Lebanese people could not care less for the Arab summit and view it with a substantial dose of skepticism and wariness for many reasons, including the following:

1 – No good can be expected from the Arab summit in regard to untangling Lebanon’s problems, many of which are caused by the Arabs to begin with. In fact, the Lebanese fear that the summit will widen the divide among the politicians in Lebanon as to the composition or identity of the delegation that is legitimately qualified to represent the country, given the ongoing vacuum in the presidency. In doing so, the Damascus summit would further complicate the Lebanese crisis, before it even actually convenes.

2 – The Lebanese people know that the delegation, should a consensus be reached and a delegation is indeed sent to Damascus, will not dare to confront Syria and expose its terrorist role in Lebanon. Instead, the delegation will resort to cajoling Syria and currying its favors, and engage it from a standpoint of flattery and equivocation, and thus itself become a false witness to the truth. It would acquit Syria before the summit attendees of its guilt in the crimes it has committed on our soil.

3 – The Lebanese know that the Damascus summit is likely to be a clone of all previous failed Arab summits, achieving nothing more than the usual media fanfare, photo ops and the blathering and effusive statements.

4 – Through their previous trials and long hardships with the Arabs, our people have become keenly aware that the Arab summits will never yield a solution to Lebanon’s problems. In the past, similar summits have always led to exacerbating these problems such that whenever the Arabs disagreed, they did so by dividing Lebanon amongst themselves, and whenever they agreed, it was at Lebanon’s expense.

Those who claim that the Arabs stood by Lebanon by granting it a few loans and occasional financial assistance, the fact is that all the money that the Arabs have offered Lebanon cannot match a tiny fraction of the magnitude of the material, political and moral destruction they have inflicted on this country over the years and the decades.

If there are men in this country of ours, they ought to boycott the Damascus summit, at least out of a sense of national dignity. They ought to withdraw Lebanon’s membership in this sterile organization that the Arab League is, and stop searching for solutions in the capitals of other countries. They ought to focus home, on the Lebanese internal scene in Beirut where all the solutions are. That is, of course, if there are men of courage and character in this country of ours, with the sound intentions and goodwill to find those solutions.

Lebanon, at your service
Abu Arz
March 14, 2008