Free Koolaids by Alameddine Rabih Page B

their place of origin. These people flocked to this country seeking freedom of religion and expression, and they found it. However, they, too, had the same problem as the Lebanese. Since they arrived from many different places, being of many different ethnic backgrounds and religions, they, too, did not identify with their host country. Rather, they identified with their clans, with their states, or with their regions. I guess by now you have figured the historical precedent for Lebanon I am describing is the United States of America. And it is true, during the first sixty years of the country’s existence no one called themselves “Americans.” It was not used. The people referred to themselves as “Georgians” or “New Yorkers” or “Alabamans” or “Virginians.” They never referred to themselves as Americans.
    We had our civil war, as Lebanon had hers, in which one group tried to overcome the other, Northerners (Anglo-Saxons) against Southerners (Scot-Irish). Our war was more violent, and much bloodier than the Lebanese war. We, too, had the dominant international power of the day intervene on behalf of one side (the British intervened on behalf of the South in an attempt to break up the United States). The result of the civil war was the South and the British lost, and the concept of union won. It was really from that point forward that the citizens in America began to identify with the country first and referred to themselves as Americans, rather than members of one clan (read state) or the other. We adopted the national slogan, E Pluribus Unum, “From the Many There Is One.” It is appropriate that Lebanon should assume this national motto. The Lebanese should not feel delegitimized because they experienced civil war. Rather, the war was a legitimizing event. It was the crucible in which the nation of Lebanon was born, in much the same way as the American Civil War was the crucible in which the nation of America was born.
    I am an American. I am also a Southerner. The South is the only region of America to have ever experienced “foreign” occupation as we were occupied by Federal troops from 1866–1872. We, in the South, did not assume the identity of our conquerors by becoming Yankees. We stayed Southerners, and to this day are proud of our unique heritage. However, we became even better Americans. To this day most of the American military is made up of Southerners. We make the finest officers and foot soldiers.
    No person who engaged in, or lived through, the Lebanese Civil War—which ended, by the way, in 1976; the rest of the fighting was a proxy war of aggression executed against Lebanon by her neighbors—should feel compelled or threatened into surrendering their cultural identity as a result of the Lebanon war. Rather, a national identity should emerge, in conjunction with a cultural one. Everyone from Lebanon is a Lebanese first. Everyone passed through the war, suffered from the war, and now faces occupation because of the war and its outcome. There is a common history which weaves each community, ethnic, regional, and religious, together to form one national identity. It was the common thread of the American Civil War that did the same for America.
    To be from Lebanon means you are from a place of refuge and tolerance. You share a country with people of many different backgrounds, cultural identities, and faiths. To make Lebanon like its Arabic neighbors is to deny her identity.
    I agree with many of the writers that Lebanese are free to be Arabs if this is their cultural identity, and they are free to be Western if that is their cultural identity, or even Aramaic. This is the point. In Lebanon, one should be free to be different. This is the essence of being Lebanese and the essence of being American.
    Wayne Kasem
    â€¦
    â€œCan’t we all just get along?” asked the modern-day philosopher with puffed lips.
    â€¦
    I sent a