The Guardians of the Cedars Party issued the following communiqué:

Army Day has a special feel this year in Lebanon since it comes at a time of great popular consensus and international admiration for the pioneering role it is playing on more than one front at the same time. From the southern border to the northeastern border, from hunting down the sabotage networks and eliminating their active and sleeper cells in more than one place, to Nahr Al-Bared where it wages alone a fierce war against a terrorist web that the most powerful armies have been unable to crush in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not to forget its role on the internal front where it faces the fierce war of the political feud between the March 8 and March 14 camps.

One wonders how was the army able to shoulder these great burdens with meager capabilities and under decaying political conditions surrounding it on all sides. Overnight, it became a unique phenomenon synthesizing all the meanings of courage, wisdom and altruism, as if it was made from a different clay than a State which in turn is the synthesis of all the meanings of corruption, cowardice and political and moral decline. The army and the people are now in one universe, and the political establishment is in another, and there is no comparing between them.

The army embodies national unity in its most splendid manifestation, and the political establishment embodies national division in its worst form. The army sacrifices the best of its soldiers on the altar of Lebanon with silence and dignity, and the politicians butt one another, insult each other and stand ready to sacrifice Lebanon for the sake of their selfish interests and the booty. The army is building for the rise of a prestigious State respected by people and feared by the enemies, while they indulge in undermining the foundations of the State.

The heated conflict currently ongoing in the Matn District over a parliamentary seat is bereft of ethical standards and authentic Lebanese traditions. It is reminiscent of the early 1990s when the bloody conflict between people of the same trench led to the fall of the last bastion of freedom in this East. And they wonder today how the “Christians” got to this state of weakness and marginalization, as if the conspiracy was purely external, and as if the “Christian” interior was not a fertile land for the conspiracy!!!

From the modest information we have, and having lived the events on the ground, we re-assert with much regrets and bitterness that the powerlessness of the “Christians” in particular, and the Lebanese in general, remains due to the internal Maronite-Maronite conflict over power and money from the term of Beshara Al-Khoury and all the way to the present regime. Unfortunately, there seems to be no end in sight.

Lebanon, at your service
Abu Arz
August 3, 2007