From Aoun to Trump to Corbin
Hussain Abdul-Hussain/Now Lebanon/October 05/15
Shortly before the Iraq War in 2003, I ran into former British lawmaker George Galloway at a pub in Beirut where we engaged in a heated debate over the war. I wanted dictator Saddam Hussein removed. Galloway accused me of neo-conservatism. I told him I found it unsettling that I — partially raised in Baghdad and of Iraqi descent, with much higher stakes in that country than him — had to justify myself before a British MP who praised dictators from the comfort of his London office.
Shortly after Saddam’s downfall, the list of those on his payroll showed Galloway’s name as well as some Lebanese politicians, including former lawmaker Najah Wakim, in whose party I was one of the first and foremost activists.
Wakim’s tell-it-like-it-is attitude, his defiance of the establishment and his secularism were all characteristics that made him an attractive choice. In 1996, I joined his election campaign, the volunteers of which later started the People’s Movement. For the next two years, I was heavily involved in student politics at the American University of Beirut on Wakim’s behalf.
At the People’s Movement, we joined labor unions in protests against the government and in defiance of security forces. We opposed the ruling establishment — especially late Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, whom we believed was the incarnation of a Zionist-Masonic-American conspiracy in Lebanon.
We made friends with groups that gravitated around other tell-it-like-it-is leaders, such as former Army General Michel Aoun. One time, Assad’s viceroy in Lebanon, Ghazi Kanaan, censored an interview that Maguy Farah was scheduled to conduct with Aoun from his exile in Paris.
The Aounists rallied in Achrafieh’s Sassine Square to protest censorship as we, leftist students, joined them, only for the army to beat and disperse everyone.
Wakim attacked corruption. Aoun opposed the international arrangement that had divided Lebanon into spheres of influence between Israel and Assad. Galloway was the Westerner who had seen the light and fought on our side for a free Palestine.
Like us, these politicians were the underdogs. Like us, I thought, they were sincere. Those were the days. Then came a day when other leftist groups tried to enlist us, the Wakim party, for a campaign on civil marriage. Despite our secularism, Wakim passed. Apparently, 7,000 of his constituents were Sunnis who would turn away if he supported civil marriage.
I later discovered that Wakim was friends with Assem Qanso, the secretary general of Assad’s Baath Party in Lebanon. Wakim and Qanso had a weekly card-playing date. When Wakim wanted us to campaign in municipal elections for a ticket that included Charbel Nahhas — who would later become an Aounist minister and a leader of the recent anti-government movement — I realized that anti-establishment politicians were frauds.
I was right. Aoun, who had spent 25 years accusing Assad of targeting Lebanon’s Christians, in 2005 jumped at the opportunity Assad had given him to return from exile and atone for his past. Like magic, Aoun refocused his sectarian rage from Assad to Hariri. Like a herd of sheep, his partisans followed. Regardless of his political shift, Aoun maintained his signature twitchy behavior and populism as he continued going after journalists.
Today it seems populism is fashionable worldwide.
America’s presidential candidates, Republicans Donald Trump and Ted Cruz and the tentatively Democratic Bernie Sanders, are all presenting themselves as tell-it-like-it-is firebrands. Like Aoun, Trump attacks journalists and trashes national war heroes. And like Aoun, perhaps also because of his bullying behavior, Trump is leading in the polls. Meanwhile, Senator Ted Cruz publically called fellow Republican and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnel a liar.
Cruz, who can’t seem to get along with his own party’s senators, wants to run a country as vast and diverse as America. This wouldn’t be a concern expect that he is still alive in the polls. On the left side of the aisle, Bernie Sanders — who was never in the Democratic Party — now wants to win the party’s nomination for president.
The senator from the fringe, who could not build consensus on anything during his time in Congress, now wants to change America. How? Middle class this, middle class that and bang, Bernie is turning into the leader of a cult that wants to bring down the temple.
Like Trump, Cruz, Sanders, Wakim, Nahhas, Aoun and Galloway, Britain’s John Corbin — a fringe personality — is now the chief of one of Britain’s two mainstream parties.
