Seeing Blue

All the success and glory of the Future Movement comes from one single art that they mastered very well: Overwhelming counter-attack.


In the martial art of Aikido, a fighter prevails by using the strength of his enemies against them. An Aikido practitioner knows very well how to use the energy and momentum of a raging aggressor for his own end, consequently defeating him with astuteness and minimal physical effort.

Mustapha Hashem, the new and proud member of the Future Movement M.Ps in Akkar, is by no means an Aikido master. But watching him assault the FPM’s Gebran Bassil with his own weapon makes you wonder.

Gebran Bassil had said that the Mufti was being biased in the last round of the elections, and in the process he made a few ill-advised comments about the Mufti’s worthiness.
Picking up on that, in typical Future Movement style, Mustapha Hashem focused on Basil’s statement, magnified it, laid it bare to Mufti-adoring masses in Akkar, then retorted loudly by reminding Bassil, a Christian, that “Moslems respect their Mufti the same way Christians respect the Patriarch”…

Regardless of how abhorrent this confessional exchange is, or who’s right and who’s wrong, the incident is a perfect demonstration of how the Future Movement works:
They mind their own business (which is slowly gathering popularity and power), until someone notices that they pose a threat and picks up a fight with them. Being the victims, they get sympathy. They then add to that sympathy a devastating arsenal of attack dogs, from media, to connections, to influence to power. Before you know it, their opponent is blasted into oblivion. They grow up a notch, move on, and go back to minding their own business again.

In Lebanon, Napoleon seems to have gotten it wrong: defense is the best offence. A brief look at the history of the Future Movement carries a wealth of examples.

In 2000, Hariri the father was being relentlessly attacked by the then PM Salim el Hoss and President Lahhoud. His counter attack got him all the seats of Beirut, precisely because the election law was rigged against him.
This year, the people in Tripoli and Akkar only voted en masse for Hariri Jr. because they felt that Aoun and Franjieh are attacking him. The voters seemed to be thinking: “How dare Aoun talk about petro-dollar while the Martyr’s blood hasn’t dried yet??”
It amazes me how Hariri's opponents never seem to learn.

Stand By Your Man
Like in the case of the Mufti, Some examples are less obvious.
Take the one that is going on right now between the interior minister (a Haririst) and his detractors. They are accusing him of not doing anything with the latest car assassinations and of being worse than his Syrian-backed predecessors.
The Future media network is now busy counter-attacking by focusing daily on the progress of the investigations, with juicy gimmicks like suspect sketches, detective divers and explosives analysis.

Unfortunately, the biggest, most effective, but saddest counter-attack of them all, was the one that drove the Syrians out of Lebanon. This latest example shows that although the future movement counter attacks very well, it sometimes wishes that it has never been attacked in the first place.