The Central Command of the Guardians of the Cedars Party - The Movement for Lebanese Nationalism held its weekly meeting and issued the following communiqué:
Fate wanted Army Day in Lebanon this year to coincide with the bloody events in the south earlier this week in the vicinity of the village of Al-Adaysseh, during which the Army proved it had the capability, the courage and the decision-making in defense of Lebanon when duty called, without currying any favors from anyone. These are the qualities to which we always looked up in the Army ever since its inception in 1945.
As we celebrate and congratulate the Army on its day, we salute its patriotic stance and stand by its side as has been our tradition all along in the Party. We ask God to bestow His mercy on the Army's martyrs and grant its wounded speedy recovery, and may next year's Army Day see all Lebanese soil under its exclusive control, throughout the land, the capital Beirut and its suburbs, inside and outside the Palestinian camps, from north to south and from its eastern frontier to its territorial waters, without contender, partner, alien or alternate, as the Army is the sole and exclusive, legal and legitimate, protector of Lebanon against its enemies inside and outside the borders, and they are not a few.
The honorable Lebanese refuse that the festering wound of Lebanon remains indefinitely open on account of the Arab-Israeli conflict or the Iranian-Israeli conflict, leaving this small nation to bear alone the consequences of the Palestinian question, while the rightful custodians of the question of Palestine are either derelict or in a hurry to make peace with Israel, and while all the other Arab fronts are peaceful or in deep slumber like the front of the country next door that refers to itself as the front of "Resistance and Confrontation", or "The pulsating heart of Arabism". We, the honorable Lebanese, reject that our Army and our people remain the fodder for that conflict, the scapegoat for a cause other than our own sacred cause, and hostages to a conflict not of our making.
The continuous uproar over the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which is escalating by the day like a television weekly series, though it has suspense, excitement and much fear-mongering, will not in the end obstruct the work of this Tribunal nor cripple it nor abort the indictment. First, because it is out of Lebanon's hands and is in the custody of the international community, and as such no one has the power to influence its decisions no matter who they are or how important they are. Second, to cripple the Tribunal means to cripple the international legitimacy and challenge the credibility of the United Nations, itself a prelude to the collapse of all the other international tribunals currently prosecuting other crimes perpetrated in Cambodia, Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone, Sudan and elsewhere. The international community will not accept this, nor be tolerant of it.
So this uproar, or rather this shrieking, will only lead to deepening the chasm of hatred between the Lebanese, and poison the atmosphere and raise tensions, in preparation for igniting a strife that may start in Lebanon but end in Iran. But more insidious is the fact that all of this is being done under the slogan of defending Lebanon and out of concern for its security and stability!!!!
The question remains: How long before this tormented country is free from the grip of those who control its decision-making and who are snuffing the last breath out of its soul with their own hands?
Lebanon, at your service
Abu Arz