Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Lebanese hero speaks up

Thursday, Jan. 4, 2001 | 9:11 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor.

There is still hope for something worthwhile to come out of continuing conflicts in the Middle East. This glimmer of hope was given a burst of energy because an 80-year-old Maronite Catholic has the courage to speak up as others cower in fear.

Writer Susan Sachs, reporting from Beirut in the New York Times, tells of the heroism displayed by Cardinal Nasrallah Butros Sfeir, whom she describes as "a tiny old man." The patriarch of Christians in Lebanon says he can't remain quiet "as long as the Syrians do not change their attitude and our relations with them are not based on an honest partnership." Words far less fiery than these have cost the lives of many Lebanese Christians since the Syrian army took over his country a decade ago.

Remember all of the Arab League whining about Israel going into Lebanon to stop the Muslim butchering of Christians? The late Syrian President Hafez Assad finished the killing of prominent Christians while the world watched the Gulf War.

When that short war started, President George Bush encouraged Saudi Arabia to pay $500 million in bribe money to Assad, who spent it on sophisticated weapons from Russia, North Korea and China.

Our coddling of Assad did nothing to help our troops in Desert Storm. He sent a token 17,000 men from his 500,000-man army, which also had 4,000 tanks, and refused to allow them to be part of any assault against Iraq. Furthermore, he wouldn't let our combat planes overfly Syria during the heat of battle.

As the United States and the United Nations condemned Israel for being in Lebanon, the World Lebanese Organization asked the Israeli people:

Israel, complying with U.N. Resolution 425, withdrew to a small security zone in southern Lebanon and seven months ago moved out of that country completely. Did the Syrians at any time withdraw their troops? Hardly, the Syrians supported the Hezbollah and other terrorist groups attacking farmers in northern Israel.

The Times writer points out that "Syria was supposed to have moved its 30,000 troops in Lebanon to the Bekaa region eight years ago. It has not, and none of the Lebanese presidents handpicked by Syria have asked that it do so. Syria also keeps an undisclosed number of intelligence agents in Lebanon.

"Meanwhile, the once powerful Christian warlords like Samir Geagea, who led a militia called the Lebanese Forces, and Michel Aoun, a renegade army general, are now in prison or in forced exile. Their Muslim and Druse counterparts, on the other hand, have prominent government positions.

"And despite the guarantee of half the seats in Parliament, Christian leaders said, Lebanon's elections are so manipulated by Syria that independent Christian politicians are effectively shut out of politics.

"So when the patriarch and others raised the issue of Syria, they raised the equally sensitive issue of Christian political power as well.

" 'The common belief in the Christian community is that whenever this added influence is removed, the internal situation will balance itself out naturally,' said Simon M. Karam, a Maronite activist and former ambassador to Washington."

It takes a hero like Cardinal Sfeir to challenge the terrible situation in his country while others hide in fear or pay tribute to the occupying Syrian forces. Although former Secretary of State James Baker kept silent about the situation in Lebanon and his successor, Secretary Warren Christopher, did little more, things are heating up again. Let's see what the new administration in Washington will do when the cardinal and his followers feel the sting of Syrian brutality.