Have you not messed with the Lebanese Army? Some Lebanese are capable of always surprising me with their nationalist and ultra-nationalist delusions. It came to my attention that somebody formed a group on facebook: it is called "Nobody mess with the Lebanese Army!" It has thousands of enthusiastic Lebanese members. Are those people serious? Like you think that the Lebanese Army is showing courage in shelling Palestinian refugees: the refugees who are the weakest element of Lebanese society? And everybody messes with the Lebanese Army. In fact, the name of the group should be Has Anybody NOT messed with the Lebanese Army? In every confrontation with Israel, the Lebanese Army ran away, literally. Even when the Lebanese Army was supposed to join an Arab collective force--as was the case in 1948, it sent secret messages to Israel (we now know from documents released through the Israeli archives) to the effect that it does not want to fight, and it never did. When did the Lebanese Army defend Lebanon from successive Israeli attacks and invasions that began back in the 1950s? And what is the record of the Lebanese Army vis-a-vis the Syrian army? The same. But the Lebanese Army was used in its history only against civilian populations: against the Palestinian refugee camps since the 1950s; and against the Muslim and Druze populations of Lebanon in the administration of Amin Gemayyel? Do you remember when the Lebanese Army of Amin Gemayyel and Gen. `Awn tried to subdue the southern suburbs of Beirut in the 1980s, and it failed? Do you remember how brutally it was shelled? Do you remember how Jumblat's army could not defend the mountain from the Lebanese Army attacks, and they pleaded for help form Palestinian armed groups, like the PFLP-GC? Some Lebanese are desperate to believe that their joke of a home land is a serious national project that they are willing to cling to anything: even delusions and illusions and especially fabrications--as long as it makes them feel nationalistically better. Our slogan should instead be: the Lebanese Army should be excluded from any security role in Lebanon (excluding traffic regulation) until it plays a role in defending Lebanese territory from Israeli attacks on Lebanon. It should be dissolved again, and restructured. And those Lebanonese nationalists who are celebrating the "victories" of the Lebanese Army: do they think that it takes courage to shell refugee camps? Just tell me about that. Talk to Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, and they would tell you about the bravery of the Lebanese Army. How back before the Palestinian resistance groups formed, Lebanese soldiers would enter the camps and abuse the men and harass the women inside. One older women once told me that before the Cairo Agreement, Palestinian refugees would not keep their windows open even in the summer because the peeping toms of the Lebanese Army were always peeking in. And I know: some are willing to be impressed to remind us that the Lebanese Army helped the Lebanese national resistance against Israeli occupation. They did help in providing secret help. SECRET HELP. What kind of an army is it when it only defends the territory in secret. And some people last sumer (when the Lebanese Army abdicated its primarily responsibility) were defending the Army and saying that if they were to fire shots at Israel army of occupation, they would be killed. Is that not their job? Why are they being paid and pampered by the Lebanese people? We thought that the fancy budget that the Lebanese Army was receiving in the 1990s, was intended to bolster the fighting abilities of that lousy army. I take the Lebanese Army as seriously as I take Lebanon as a homeland, or as seriously as I take the regular "news" item in An-Nahar newspaper to the effect that some brilliant Lebanese somewhere has just "invented" a cure for cancer.