A few days ago, on the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of the Lebanese war, the culture of shirking responsibility for this conflict beamed once again. Several writers and observers have pointed to some manifestations of this culture whose prevalence has not been hindered by its corruption.
The war is "the events," or the "inauspicious" or "painful" events - terminology that is meant to downplay its belligerent identity and emphasize its emotional impact while also obscuring its real makers. With the active self-erased, the war is made to seem like a mysterious act of nature gone mad.
It is also a "war others fought on our land," as we are told by the cliche that announces our innocence, presenting us as victims used or manipulated by "others" in moments of complacency that have brought us great pain. This narrative is not without an implicit plea that "those who did this to us" receive divine retribution.
Another image, "Iran’s occupation of Lebanon," later grew out of this image. While Iran has obviously played an active role in fueling the devastation in Lebanon, this does not mean that we have an Iranian "occupation" manned by Iranian soldiers - an occupation that eclipses the direct roles played by the Lebanese themselves.
Something similar could be said about the prevalence of cursing the partisan militias that "brought us all this devastation." Once again, if cursing these militias is valid, or rather necessary, that does not negate the fact that these armed groups operated on behalf of sects during the war; the sects funded and embraced them, while they were tasked with defending their sects. Our "kind" and "innocent" people, compelled by their sectarian bent, chose to sanctify four or five leaders of these militias.
The more ideologized literature did not shy away from this task. At one point or another, the populist left blamed the war on capitalism, which had built an unproductive economy. Meanwhile, the populist right blamed it on an "international left" relentlessly conspiring against Lebanon. And of course, bland prose, which reads like a high-school essay, also weighs in, accusing evildoers and demons of crushing our dreams and memories, but refusing to name names or make designations...
As for what all these manifestations share, it is an avoidance of any re-examination of what actually happened during the war, and thus an avoidance of any attempt to grapple with personal responsibility for what happened, some of which remains ongoing. Only a few have clearly stated that the primary source of the war is the deep fissure of Lebanese national identity and the disputes around this identity that date back to its inception. We do not agree on how to define the fundamental building blocks of national unity, such as "homeland,people,enemy," and others. In fact, the foreign "evildoers" seep through the gaps of this huge fissure: "unjust capitalism,international left," or " Iranian occupation," whatever is meant by these terms.
What is more important is that its endurance for 50 years shows how popular and unanimous this denial remains, especially since frank reassessments have been too little too late despite the many moments of opportunities to do so which we have had during those 50 years.
We actually have several drivers of denial, including an inflated narcissism which refuses to recognize that evil can spring from within it, as well as a fear - emanating from the influence of modernity and its standards - of appearing "uncivilized," of not being suited to nations, and of perhaps resembling Europe's past but certainly not its present.
One notion that modernity introduced, and that nationalist movements then indulgently developed, is that the people must be great, in addition to being innocent, and that when they make mistakes or run out of luck, they are nothing but the victims of their oppressors and the covetous. Even if they speak of themselves as great peoples and nations, however, communal groups do not face the responsibilities of refusing to turn into peoples and nation-states, as well as to prioritize this marker over lesser markers like their sect, ethnicity, and others.
Our consistency, over the past 50 years, in denying the real problem and of the fact that we are the ones who created it, seems to suggest that we do not genuinely want to resolve the problem because we do not want to resign from our role as its creators. We may seek to overcome some of the bitter consequences that we cannot bear, but resolving it by avoiding recurrence remains something else that borders on fantasy.
The American scholar of the Middle East Malcolm Kerr considered the Yemeni war of the early 1960s to be the first Arab civil war of the modern era. The Lebanese war was certainly the second major war in the post-independence Arab world. The two countries, each in its own way, remain quietly or blatantly divided. And we now have an increasing number of Arab countries registering their names on honor rolls of blood that are studded with lots of rhetoric about "kinship,brotherhood,sisterhood," and, of course, relentless "colonial conspiracies against our nation."
