Preceding Michel Aoun's return from exile, and Samir Geagea's liberation, there was a belief that the one who first accesses freedom gains the popularity and support of the crowd yearning for a savior. Christians, it was said, were ready for a leader to capture them all, but the question was: who will be the first to reach the banquet?

Such a statement remains partially accurate, since the difference between the "General" and the "Hakim" crowds is deeper than to be summed up by the simple exit to the street and to freedom. Each bears the cross of a different tradition of Christian political action, and addresses different positions and interests.

The Chamoun-Edde Tradition

The General is the next in line in a sequel of the Maronite political leaders/persons, who emerged during the second half of the twentieth century, the most notable of whom being Camille Chamoun and Raymond Edde. In such a context, the specific assessment of the person assumes a pivotal role; mood always playing a part in the assessment, and sometimes, has the sole impact on it.

Indeed, the importance of "General" Aoun's "Free Patriotic Movement" does not exceed that of the other "General" (Edde's) "National Bloc" or of the "Rayess" Chamoun's "National Liberal Party". Moreover, all three parties' "organizational" structures lack the political culture through which parties use to unify their partisans' views on their environment, and install in them a specific party spirit. In the event that such spirit fails to surpass the allegiance to the one leader, it tries to mold it and add convincing contents to it.

The Leader/person's words and/or actions delineate the course around which public life is built. This direction breaks away from the structures of a firm and deductive reasoning. Instead, persistence and sticking to a single opinion replace this logic for Aoun's partisans who do not ask for anything more. Regular doses of perseverance and stubbornness that he seeped out of his remote exile counter-balanced the lack of charisma, replacing it with a new and special charisma. Naturally, it also represents a basis over which "politics" are established, since it is considered a finite position that crystallizes one specific moment in time. The Aounists' "Where were they when we were resisting the Syrians?" leitmotiv keeps out the new and the changing, and even the others' approaches to the "General", be they on close grounds to his. Such perseverance and stubbornness shun all those who have come to regret previous actions, and those who wish to re-examine their positions.

There is a certain selectiveness in such matters: Aoun is entitled to privileges others cannot enjoy. In the meantime, the relationship with the partisans who believe the 'perseverance and stubbornness' myth and its ensuing charisma, follows a pattern that comforts the "General's" mood. His mood can therefore swing according to its heart's desire, away from all criticism and surveillance.

It is not a given, that as big a turn as the "understanding" concluded with "Hezbollah" should pass unnoticed by a Christian crowd that needed no further element to fear Hezbollah. Nor is it mundane for Aonism to move into this "understanding" after such a short period to its implication in the resolution 1559 that aimed at disarming the said party. We can therefore conclude that persistence and mood are enough elements to achieve an unprecedented submission to a leadership, and to curb all power to criticize, even in an environment that never before surrendered its power to discuss and object.

Even if mood, however shape it took, is the common trait joining Aoun to Edde, it does not veil other details: the young Aoun was known to admire the late leader of the National Bloc. His admiration later steered in the direction of Bashir Gemayel, prompting Aoun to actively join the latter's operation headquarter. Symbolism and real indications abound in current MP Salim Salhab's move to Aoun's party, knowing that he is an offspring of a traditional National Bloc "Home". Similarly to this action was the new Baabda MP, Pierre Daccache's move from a previous allegiance to Chamoun's "National Liberal Party", which used to brandish slogans of "nationalism" and "freedom" that Aoun's movement now uses instead.

Aoun inherited Camille Chamoun's affirmative position on the Jabal (mountain) politics, seeing it as the foundation of the Christian leadership and the starting point in establishing a close relationship with the rest of the sects, whether by rivalry or coalitions. As Camille Chamoun fought his first electoral campaigns in northern Metn, upon the expiration of his presidential mandate in 1960, Michel Aoun fought his Jbeil-Kesrouan battle. It would seem that the leader/person is not limited to the criteria surrounding his belonging to a certain region, but rather that, as a person, he defines the criteria. Like Chamoun, who previously surrounded himself with an entourage of extremely ordinary MPs, the General heads an assembly of most ordinary men, while Gibran Bassil, his son-in-law, who lost the elections tops them all in prominence and importance. Today's "General" replicates the same protest that Chamoun voiced in the fifties and sixties, as to the fair opposition of the Chouf and Aley Christians to the monopoly of the Druze-Jumblatt leadership over the two regions.

This personal appropriation of causes explains how the Aounis' entire or partial cause is Aoun himself, especially when his legacy of wars and exile is coupled with the Christians' long experience with marginalization under the former rule. It also explains the Aounis' deep involvement in the conflicts opposing the Jumblati Druze clan to the remainder of the Yazbaki-Arslan clan [Both Druze sects], and their attempt to win shares in the midst of the Islamic sects, as well as among the non-Maronite Christians.

If the leadership of the Jabal (mountain) necessarily leads to the Presidency, then the General's fate is determined by the conflict of power over position and allegiance, mirroring the previous course that Camille Chamoun, Beshara el Khoury, Emile Edde and others still, outlined before him. This being the situation, Aoun's displeasure increases at the sight of Walid Jumblatt's position in the Jabal, which besieges and limits his launching platform, just as Saad Hariri's influence in Beirut does. Both influences threaten his hopes of reaching the presidency. Since he links the national, patriotic issue to his own issues, it was difficult for his "Tayyar" (movement) to remain just one of the March 14 factions, only set apart from the others through its actions.

Between Sunnis and Shiites

Taking this offensive line of attacks, Aounism relies on an image of Lebanon prior to its demographic and economic mutations. Unrelated to a coalition of efficient and strong counterparts in most of the Islamic sects, the head of the "Tayyar" only gathers around him marginalized and weak supporters of these sects. Subsequently, the directions that shape the Aounis' politics can be deducted as follows: the General addresses the sense of Justice and Protest in the Christians of the Jabal. The "General" stirs the regional Christians' sensitivity since the Muslim majority in the North is the one that has the final say on the Christians' political representation. There is also those tired of "marginalization" who see everywhere a "conspiracy" that aims at restoring their previous situation. The "understanding" with "Hezbollah" was consolidated by an image of old Lebanon that depicts the Shiite sect in its pre-1975 state, a power used as a pressure card in politics more than it actually participates in it, a sect so consumed by "goodness" and "simplicity" that outstrip the developments entails by the rise of the Khomeini party. Such a patriarchal reading states that the said party's external and regional impact proves (wrongly) that it does not affect the basic internal politics, instead of finding in this regional role a proof of the importance of external interference in these politics.

Hence, an environment weakened and "feminized" by war can only see Nasrallah and his firearm as two symbols of excessive virility; one that belongs however, to the disciplined, order-obeying kind, which appears in the end to Lebanese Aounis as one that can be tamed.

Truth be told, Aoun, who waged a war on Syria backed by poets Said Akl and May al Murr back when Syrians were part of the largest international coalition known to history, is not the smartest man when it comes to the internal-external relations.

Seemingly, his old rural naïveté is almost intact, unmodified by his long French stay: he still believes that the world revolves around Lebanon. His part in formulating the 1559 was moved by a personal understanding that excessively and exaggeratingly relied on the internal firmness to generate the resolution. Therefore, he always brings to mind populist moments that passed or are still to come, colored by a tone of caution uttered towards the US, the West in general, and naturally Israel.

This most probably gave him the illusion that he could influence "Hezbollah" and Syrian plans, after the Syrian army's "exit" from Lebanon, as he also holds the occasional illusory belief that he could continue his program regardless and in opposition to the positions of powerful international parties.

Such an analysis was also present in the Edde and Chamoun logics. The Leader of the "Bloc" was known for his use of the methods today's "General" uses. The said vision and method perceives the world from the angle of the Lebanese will, not to say the angle of the General's personal vision and the conditions he imposes on the world. The late President previously faced the Nasserite post-1956 rise with the falsification of the 1957 elections, after the '56 war was proclaimed the war to end "old colonialism". The following year, he faced the Syrian-Egyptian unity that half of the Lebanese people upheld, by insisting on renewing his mandate, which half of the population had stubbornly refused to consent to.

Recalling frequent episodes when traditional Maronite politics resorted to coalitions with Shiite leaderships, starting with Youssef El Zein and Kamel al Assad to Adel Osseiran and Kazem Khalil, to weaken the urban Sunni leaderships and the Jumblatt Jabal leadership, we find that the present is but a continuity of past tradition. However, this fact does not occult objective and subjective imperatives: to Michel Aoun, a native of Beirut's southern suburb, Haret Hreik, "coexistence" must start with the Maronite-Shiite relationship (especially if the rumors around the blood ties with the Shiite Aoun family are true). In this sense, the objection to "annexing" Jezzine to a majority of Shiites did not take the same dimension as the objection to "annexing" Christians of the North with a majority of Sunni.

In any case, such a link may also have been strengthened by the structure of the military institution, which shaped the General. Indeed, inside this institution, there was a foremost important Christian, and namely Maronite presence, followed by a Shiite presence (which started to gain more grounds since the eighties). This equilibrium went undisturbed by the rural Sunni minority.

In the context of its affiliation to the Chamoun-Edde tradition, we recall an episode of Raymond Edde's biography: to Edde "coexistence" was the control over the Shiite seat in the Jabal, one that he reserved for Ahmad Esper. In the meantime, his lands in the Bekaa remained the condition for the renewal of his leadership and his position in the political and patriotic Metn. This same Edde comes from a house whose founder, the late President Emile Edde, gained unprecedented Sunni hatred ever since he invited the inhabitants of Tripoli to move to Mecca, KSA!

On a larger scale, the late Camille Chamoun, ever surrounded by Kazem Khalil, Mahmoud Ammar and sometimes Adel Osseiran, was the one who built the most ferocious animosities in pre-war Lebanon with late Sunni premiers, especially Saeb Salam and Rashid Karami.

Hezbollah's innovation:

In any case, with the advent of the seventies, equilibrium was lost, since Sayyed Moussa el Sadr moved his coalition from Christian politicians, intellectuals and clergymen to Damascus and the Palestinian resistance. Likewise, he relocated his differences with the Sunni Fatwa council [ The highest Sunni authority], from which he extirpated the prerogatives of his council: the Higher Islamic Shiite Council, to the institutions of the "Maronite State", which were depicted as the sole responsible for the misery of the "deprived".

This course witnessed a peak during the war: the Israeli occupation and the resistance it engendered. Through such events and developments, coupled with regional powers and their interests, and major demographic mutations, Edde and Chamoun's Shiites ceased to resemble Aoun's supposed Shiites; therefore, the "understanding" with Hezbollah is likened to random, sporadic shelling, or rather the last strike whose failure is inevitably followed by the surrender to despair mixed with certain and perhaps even suicidal extremism.

Nonetheless, the Aouni awareness does not forget the past. It most probably still places the "Palestinian" over the "Syrian" on its scale of hostility: although there was mutual fighting between the General and the Syrians, he has always viewed them as "outsiders" with whom he can reach an agreement once they exit the country and regain their outsider status. On the other hand, Palestinians remain the "infiltrating", resident evil; this is a southern-felt sensitivity as much as it is a professional and personal one. Having been in the ranks of the first military cadets during the Fouad Chehab mandate, the young officer was bewildered by the armed Palestinian project when it clashed with the State, and monopolized the tools of violence and power. Following the assassination of Saida's renowned MP, Maarouf Saad in 1974, seen by many as the spark of the "two year war", Aoun served in the South, witnessing the heated clashes between the army on one side and the Palestinian resistance with its allies on the other. During battles that took place in Souk al Gharb in the eighties, Aoun clashed with the Palestinians and their "irregular" allies, whom he looks down upon professionally. He did not see the "regular" Syrian military who was like him, on the other side; the military that was invisible at first. Being an artillery officer, Michel Aoun sees the visible enemy and prepares to bomb him, when possible. When he does not see the enemy, however, after the latter hides, withdraws its army, or its "regular" military, he no longer considers him an enemy, no matter the conflict of politics and interests outside the immediate field of vision.. Adding his personal sensitivities to his past awareness, the General fails to see the big and new current turns of events:

To his ignorance of the innovation in the midst of the Shiites, after the demographic revolution and the Iranian revolution they witnessed, he adds a new ignorance of the modifications on the other side, which affected the Sunnis of the post-Hariri assassination, reconciling them with the concept of Lebanese patriotism. Lack of awareness is not a fortuitous state with no function. Clinging to an old image of Lebanon is disturbed by the recognition of the Sunnis', and especially urban factions', political "Lebanonization", just as it is troubled by the recognition of the demographic and regional changes the Shiites went through and the ensuing alliances, awareness and organization in their circles.

'Aounism' only finds confidence in itself and in its capacity to understand the world through denial: to deny the Shiites change that took them in a direction different from that of the Sunnis. Subsequently, there exists a pyramidal awareness, consecrating the General at the top, followed by a 'forced' annexation of some (Sunnis and Druzes), and a 'tempted' annexation of others (Shiites).

The founding denial concerns the changes that Christians themselves witnessed. Michel Aoun's voice and ambition transcends the Christian 'size', now that he suffers a demographic withdrawal, beside the loss of mediation with western politics, such as was evident through the intimate French and American ties with the Hariris, and the disregard of Condoleeza Rice during her last visit to Beirut. He attempts to compensate all these losses through a charisma made from shreds of stubbornness, persistence and populism. Such a tendency joins the General's intellectual and mental capacities with a political naiveté of a weakly politicized Christian minority that lacks all experience, if we exclude wartime suffering and the militias' domination. This point unites the crowd of followers with their "regular" leader, to whom the Lebanese Forces' murder of Khalil Canaan in the mid-eighties was a big blow.

The old Lebanon immortalized in Aoun's "'discourse" is not a confessional, sectarian nation in the simple definition of the term; it is rather sectarian in a dull way that entails a promotion of the old unity when the simple recognition of the Christian potential spared Christians the overt recognition of simple sectarianism. He dresses all "Lebanese" in a Christian image of their country, where supremacy is endless and kept intact. If Aoun's awareness made him consider himself as representing the rest of the "people" and speaking for them, it is because such a trend conforms with his environment's likeness for "patriotism" before the 1975 war shook it, while "confessionalism" dubbed as "backward" and "shameful" remains openly despised and vilified.

Part one of two