No Excuses for Walid Jumblat

Posted on by Mustapha

Mr. Jumblat is in his full rights to make a political U-turn. What he doesn’t deserve however is sympathetic “understanding”

By now, everyone should have heard of Mr. Jumblat’s gargantuan swerve on the Lebanese political scene. The erstwhile leader in the March 14 movement decided to forsake his trench buddies for what he is laughingly calling a “neutral” position.

Mr. Jumblat has a way of making a splash; Lebanese newspapers and websites can’t get enough of the story and everyone has something to say about it. March 14 commentators are expressing disappointment while March 8 pundits can hardly hide their Schadenfreude. Yet one particular breed of commentators -the one I’m interested in for this post- have a peculiar take on Mr. Jumblat’s move: They “understand” why Mr. Jumblat “had to” do the thing he did and sometimes make Mr. Jumblat look like a Martyr.

There are two major arguments that the above-mentioned are making. The first is the one Ilham Freiha (of Al-anwar newspaper) made in her column today, that Mr. Jumblat is protecting his vulnerable sect. The second, best expressed by my friend Abu Kais, is that Mr. Jumblat was disappointed by a combination of spinelessness from his local allies and lack of commitment from the international community.

While those arguments have some merits, they remain insufficient for explaining what seems like a shortsighted move by Mr. Jumblat.

Ms Freiha writes (my translation):

Mr. Jumblat’s U-turn goes back to May 7th of last year. That is when he pressured the Seniora government (under the threat of resignation) to dismantle Hezbollah’s communications network and uninstall their point man from the airport’s security. Things went downhill from there and Hezbollah fighters reached the gates of Mokhtara. That is when Mr. Jumblat sensed a threat not only to his political position, but to the safety of his entire sect.

The trouble with that argument is that by surrendering to the transgressors, Mr. Jumblat is sending a dangerous signal that it pays to bully other Lebanese with your weapons. This will give another reason for Hezbollah to hold on to their arsenal and increase their defiance without really guaranteeing the safety of his people. Mr. Jumblat, a student of history, should know better:  The appeasers are usually the first to go under..

Abu Kais on the other hand, writes a brilliant piece in which he paints Mr. Jumblat as someone who was let down his spineless allies, so much so that he had to retreat into the safety of “moral cowardice”:

Now that he has seemingly been shown that moral courage is synonymous with suicide, Jumblatt defaulted to moral cowardice to survive and achieve peace, and reap the promised fruit of the fabled “new beginning”, albeit at the expense of an independence that will likely never come.

But moral cowardice isn’t the stuff leaders are made of. He should instead have discussed this with his allies and put them on the spot in front of the Lebanese public opinion. He should also have been forthright with the Lebanese about why he’s doing this instead of making up hollow reasons that won’t convince anyone.

In short, let’s all call this what it really is: An act of political opportunism that senses power gains from a perceived regional shift. Anything else would be excusing the inexcusable.

0 Responses to No Excuses for Walid Jumblat

  1. But don’t you see that this is not about Walid Jumblatt, it is about us and our political immaturity. This should never be about individuals but about ideas and not about personal views but collective beliefs. Feudalism is alive and well in Lebanon.

  2. I can understand M14 resentment at Jumblatt’s position, but I’m very much of the same view as Abu Kais. Jumblatt, by virtue of heading up a minority, never had much headroom for sacrificial manouevers in the first place (constitutionally and physically on the ground), yet he has offered the most out of M14 be it in the May08 events, where his Druze community put up the fiercest fight, or the recent parliamentary elections, where he gave seats away. He even looks set to sacrifice in the upcoming government.

    Ghassan Karam’s Yalibnan article used Lord John Maynard Keynes to coin it elagantly: “When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?” And this is exactly what has happened.

    Jumblatt offered more than his community can sustain, and that much was said in the ‘leaked’ video several months back. He needed far more concrete support from the US and the Arabs, which they failed to give in May 2008. Maybe in hindsight, those events were more Jumblatt’s test of his M14 allies’ true support than HA’s threat of words

    There is no heroism in suicide. As for feudalism, that is a long, and I think separate, discussion.

  3. Oh Come on Mustapha, how silly you and your M14 frieds are – I mean, how in the world could you really have trusted Jumblatt and his cronies to bge part of M14 and against Syria/HA/other arab socialist forces – I mean, is this how low and downright stupid and conned they became – a laughing stock!

    No wonder I left M14 after 3 months – no when you had Saudia Arabian Jihaidsts, PSP and the moronic, cowardly LF in one camp. Please…………Jumblatt is the same man who even admitted himself lying for 25 years (to the Syrians of all people – don’t he honestly think the leb people are that stupid – if so, he needs to go the mental ward (he should have a long time ago). But wait! he is right – the leb people are the dumb ones for leaving leaders like him in power, knowing they bought nothing but ruin to our country and did absolutely nothing to stop it – in every other country people like him are hanged. lying to the Syrians….tuh! these guys are ther biggest pack of wolves, and no doubt dreulling that their their former stooge has come back to their fold……..watch them no laugh and play

    I am telling my friend, leave the poltics aside like I did and just enjoy your Lebanese Summer.

    P.S. I hope you have not taken offence, buit I am from your part of lebanon too but am just sick of the politics – I din’t find the opposition angels either and certainly did not vote for them either – but the fact they have a more genuine poltical platform, and they what they promise, they do, and have stuck to their slogans/philosophies, hence why they are more ‘popular’ (not denying the fact their make-up includes nasty persons).

    The solution is simple bro – turn off the TV and enjoy your mezza by our beautiful mena harbour………

    Peace.

  4. Oh Come on Mustapha, how silly you and your M14 frieds are – I mean, how in the world could you really have trusted Jumblatt and his cronies to bge part of M14 and against Syria/HA/other arab socialist forces – I mean, is this how how low and downright stupid

    No wonder I left M14 after 3 months – no when you had Saudia Arabian Jihaidsts, PSP and the moronic, cowardly LF in one camp. Please…………Jumblatt is the same man who even admitted himself lying for 25 years (to the Syrians of all people – don’t he honestly think the leb people are that stupid – if so, he needs to go the mental ward (he should have a long time ago). But wait! he is right – the leb people are the dumb ones for leaving leaders like him in power, knowing they bought nothing but ruin to our country and did absolutely nothing to stop it – in every other country people like him are hanged. lying to the Syrians….tuh! these guys are ther biggest pack of wolves, and no doubt dreulling that their their former stooge has come back to their fold……..watch them no laugh and play

    I am telling my friend, leave the poltics aside like I did and just enjoy your Lebanese Summer.

    P.S. I hope you have not taken offence, buit I am from your part of lebanon too but am just sick of the politics – I din’t find the opposition angels either and certainly did not vote for them either – but the fact they have a more genuine poltical platform, and they what they promise, they do, and have stuck to their slogans/philosophies, hence why they are more ‘popular’ (not denying the fact their make-up includes nasty persons).

    The solution is simple bro – turn off the TV and enjoy your mezza by our beautiful mena harbour………

    Peace.

  5. I think Walid Junblatt is afraid for his own life. In 2005, He dared to stand up against the Syrians because he miscalculated and thought that the Syrian regime would crumble and because Hizballah at the time wasn’t as strong and wasn’t the threat that it is now. He wasn’t only an ally of the 14 March, but he was the most outspoken against the Syrians.
    He is certain that the International Tribunal will accuse Hizbullah of murdering the martyr Rafic Hariri with the knowledge of the Syrians, and he fears secterial fighting between the Shiites and Sunnis, and to protect his head, he shifted by distancing himself from 14 March and getting closer to Hizbullah and the Syrians. But the Syrians demanded of him first to prove his seriousness by meeting their conditions:
    - Attack “Lebanon First”, the slogan of Saad Hariri and the cornerstone of his “Future movement”
    - Attacking the Christians,Kataeb and Lebanese Forces and saying that they are a bad gender.
    -Meeting twice already with Wiam Wahhab, a virtual nobody in the Lebanese politics, and future meetings with Assaad Hardan.
    - Having his PSP annual meeting in the Beau Rivage hotel, previously the main headquarters of the Syrian Mukhabarat (It was Junblatt himself who said that a broom should be used to sweep the Mukhabarat from there.

    After Walid Junblatt met the Syrians demand, Wiam Wahhab met with Farouk Sharaa and later announced that the Syrians forgave him and that they took tore his page off the book.

  6. mus,

    It’s all a game…however, if we we were to take anything in serious form; this is more than proposterous! How can anyone betray their principles and deal with it as business as usual?
    It is spitting in your face!