Address of U.S. Representative Thaddeus G. McCotter
to the Lebanese Information Center and Christian Solidarity International
Washington Press Club, March 17, 2005
My friends, it is the duty and the honor of every child of the American revolution to stand as one with his fellow human beings abroad who are striving to break the yoke of tyranny and, finally, rightfully, breath free; thus, I extend my deepest gratitude for the privilege of addressing you amidst these heady days of Lebanon’s resurrection from Syrian domination.
Yet, precisely because these are enticing times for all who’ve dreamt to once again see the brilliantine glean of the “pearl of the Middle East’s” homeland, I am compelled issue a clarion caution: amidst their cries for liberty, the Lebanese people must never forget their tears of misery, which while dried by the passing of time, must ever be etched in their hearts to inform their history and ennoble their actions. For make no mistake: all of evil’s heinous minions opposed to human emancipation want you to fail.
These vile tools of totalitarianism well know Lebanese liberty threatens their own hegemony over their regimes’ oppressed peoples for, truly, the roots of Lebanon’s “Cedar Revolution” can only continue to reach deep into the hearts of every haunted, hunted human being and inspire them to hunger and reach for freedom’s fulfillment.
To date, thankfully, these despots’ moves to obstruct sovereignty’s steps have met with no success; but, even as the Syrian menace retreats before the triumphal tide of human hope, the despots obdurately harbor a hideous hope – a hideous hope these oppressors and their appeasers and apologists spit forth in the face of the Revolution’s wake:
Specifically, for Lebanon they raise the grisly specter of a post-Syrian civil war.
At bottom, the central tenet of their cynical calculation is this: if, in fact, nothing brings a divided people together faster than the presence of a common enemy, then nothing will divide a united people faster than the absence of a common enemy. Oh, how often we been forced to endure the oppressors’, appeasers’ and apologists’ mealy-mouthed renditions of this pernicious proposition throughout these early days of the Cedar Revolution! How often we have wondered why these oppressors, appeasers and apologists can have eyes and still be blind to the sight of Christian and Shi’a, Sunni and Druze, arm in arm in the streets of Beirut crying out in common cause for their common country!
Too often, too agonizingly often, have we so done; and too often, too agonizingly often, must we continue to so do. For, I again caution this is but the birth of the Cedar Revolution – the time when the incipient stirrings of sovereignty’s sapling strain to break the hoary bonds of a despotic earth. And though the sprout may pierce the soil to touch a new day’s nurturing sun, we may not - we must not – consider, nor conclude, freedom’s Cedar has arisen until we are assured its divergent roots work as one beneath it.
My friends, this is difficult to say, but again – as an American, and especially as an Irish-American descended from Ulster Catholics – I am compelled to say it: throughout the Cedar Revolution, the courageous Lebanese people must not shrink from their most formidable task. The courageous Lebanese people must honestly accept their anguished history as a once united, once divided, and once more united people; and, rather than succumb to the all too human temptations to resent or to forget and, in so doing tragically foster anew, the seeds of dissension which once separated Lebanon’s sons and daughters in Civil War, the courageous Lebanese people must humanely embrace their shared suffering and, thus, transcend themselves and transform their times into one emboldened and blessed by the charitable bonds of liberty. Only thus can be crushed the despots’ final designs for dominion; only thus can be flush the fledgling blossom of your nation.
And let there be no doubt: an imperative step in this imperative process of national reconciliation, resurrection, and redemption is the just and prompt emancipation of Dr. Samir Geagea. As Nelson Mandela before him, for over a decade Dr. Geagea has cradled freedom’s spark within his enlightened soul while trapped in the darkened depths of a Syrian-dictated, subterranean detention; now, as his country emerges toward the torch of liberty from beneath a benighted Syrian-occupation, none better than Dr. Geagea embodies the unimaginable suffering and unerring strength of the Cedar Revolution; and, in consequence, Dr. Geagea’s profound personal experience of persecution accords him the singular opportunity to inspire each Lebanese to forgive the sins of the past and forge the sinews of a united people. Truly, what can help better bind the wounds of a beleaguered people than the healing hands of this tortured doctor?
Indeed, does not the poet’s ghost agree and illume our course? Did not Kahlil Gibran write a lifetime ago: “You may forget the one with whom you have laughed, but never the one with whom you have wept.” Does not the meter of the poet and the habits of our hearts guide us to one sublime, ineluctable truth: We are never nearer God’s goodness than when we forgive?
In closing then, my friends, throughout the long life of the Cedar Revolution, no matter how hard or hurtful, I beseech the Lebanese people to recall the tribulations of their divisions as they rise to their triumph of their destiny:
Weep for past war’s widows when you cry out for your unity;
Weep for past war’s orphans when you cry out for your liberty;
Weep for past war’s childless sires when you cry out for your sovereignty;
Yes, weep for all the martyrs murdered by fear and greed and hatred when you cry out for these birthrights of liberty, sovereignty, and unity;
And, soon, forgiving and forgiven, free and sovereign, you children of the Cedar will find yourselves weeping the grateful tears of a resplendent and renewed people crying out to reclaim and redeem the despot-muted freedom of all God’s children.
Thank you.