Say what you want about Saad Hariri: that Lebanon’s prime minister designate has been disappointing in his handling of the government crisis, that he has gifted too many concessions to the opposition and that he has been buffeted to and fro by his supposed regional allies who have cut deals over his head. All these accusations may contain some grains of truth, but when held up against the behavior of an opposition whose only modus operandi is to erase both the memory and the validity of last summer’s parliamentary elections in order to create regional leverage on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran, then Sheikh Saad and his merry men and women of March 14 are models of probity.
 
One only has to listen to the leader of the Free Patriotic Movement, Michel Aoun, at his weekly press conference, to get a whiff of the madness that has saturated the March 8 psyche. In response to the Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir’s reasonable view that genuine democracy cannot flourish as long as Hezbollah holds onto its weapons, the former army commander could only respond, using the kind of logic we have come to expect from a party that is gripped by schizophrenia, by asking the head of the Maronite Church if those weapons have ever harmed him. So full of chutzpah is Aoun these days that he even raised the stakes by further suggesting to Sfeir that he should decide if he wants to live in a secure Lebanon or as a refugee outside, presumably implying that Hezbollah’s guns, rather than those, say of the army, allow him to reside on his hilltop in relative safety.

Surely Aoun must realize – or maybe he doesn’t – that a secure Lebanon is one that that makes it illegal for anyone other than the army to possess, parade and use weapons of war. That these weapons have not been turned on Bkirki is neither here nor there. They are not part of the country most Lebanese voted for.
 
But these are details. Aoun can for some unfathomable reason use words like ‘security,’ ‘democracy,’ ‘rights’ and ‘protection of Christian interests’ – the latter from a man who claims he is secular – in any context and receive nothing but the sagest of nods from his supporters.
 
But that was not all. Commenting on the long delayed government formation process—a process he is being used by Hezbollah to prolong—Aoun, with startling candor, pointed out that Hariri would never form the cabinet if he waited for consensus. Was Aoun suggesting that Hariri just go ahead and exercise his constitutional right as head of the parliamentary majority to form a government? Surely we should seek clarification on this.

But it was the issue, once again, of the weapons that drew the most dramatic statement of the day. After dismissing reports that a ship stopped by the Israeli navy was carrying arms bound for Hezbollah (Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al Mouallem, on a state visit to Iran, also felt compelled to comment on the seizure; he called it ‘piracy,” while Aoun called it ‘pottery’), Aoun blurted out that he would arm himself, “if he had the money,” and liberate Palestine!
 
Again, are we to infer from this that he sees Hezbollah’s weapons as part of an ongoing struggle, the objective of which is to march victoriously into Jerusalem having kicked the Zionist entity into the Mediterranean? This will no doubt come as a surprise to many of his supporters who have tacitly accepted the presence, for the time being, of Hezbollah’s ‘defensive’ weapons on the condition that disarmament will be discussed as part of a national defense strategy. Was this not the condition under which they accepted Aoun’s so-called Memorandum of Understanding  with Hezbollah? Now their leader is talking of a crusade. Next thing we know he’ll be asking for a restoration of the 1969 Cairo Accord.
 
Then again, we have stopped being shocked by Aoun.