If indeed the president made his promises in earnest, then his chances of success would appear to have markedly improved. Salam is a man of integrity, deep thought and equally deep knowledge of the intricacies of Lebanon’s history, laws, and politics. He comes to the position as the son of a prominent Beiruti family with his own long record of political engagement and diplomatic experience. He commands respect and enjoys credibility across significant sections of society.

Assuming Aoun and Salam will work together as a team to address a national crisis of existential proportions and the urgent need to rebuild people’s lives in the aftermath of a ferocious war, in their favor are considerable odds: sizable popular support; clout inside the military and security apparatus; a constellation of international and regional powers, each in their own capacity apparently keen to offer financial and political support; and major actors, like Iran, possibly inclined to compromise.

We can also reasonably hope that Syria, for decades a disruptive force in Lebanese politics, will be focused inward for a very long time to come.

Against them are Lebanon’s time-honored antagonists: a fiendish Israeli neighbor whose designs in the Levant and beyond, if not checked, are potentially cataclysmic; a tight-knit sectarian and business mafia; envious adversaries of the same sects for whom the president and prime minister’s success is their defeat.

We can also reasonably worry that Syria, whose politics always looms large over ours, could descend into chaos and strife.

Challenging as well for Salam and Aoun is Hezbollah’s own displeasure. The party wanted for the two positions allies with the usual unwavering deference. It is revealing that, at a moment of great peril for Lebanon, Hezbollah and its defenders are advocating for a thoroughly rotten status quo that has brought ruin upon us all. Ruin, I should add, to the resistance movement itself, which over the decades became increasingly more sullied the deeper it sank into Lebanon’s political morass.

The party’s objections to Salam are particularly curious. Neither the man’s credentials, nor his stand on Palestine, nor his probity are questioned, only that he is supposedly Saudi Arabia and American’s man. As evidenced, one has to assume, by his refusal to take orders––from Hezbollah itself. Because nothing in Salam’s long CV recommends him as any country’s toady.

The question becomes then: what has recommended to Hezbollah its own contenders, all leading members of the reigning cabal? Certainly not their impressive qualifications and impeccable reputations.

This is a time for thoughtful reflection as much as it is for urgent action. It therefore behooves the resistance, whose tenacious struggle against Israel remains the single most important accomplishment that recommends it to many Lebanese, to re-examine the presence it wants to have in politics and the values and ideals it wants to espouse in this role.

After all the sacrifice of the past year, especially by its own community, it seems elementary to Hezbollah’s legitimacy that it cannot be outraged at the injustice done to Palestinians and continue to collude in the injustices done to us Lebanese, notwithstanding the stark differences between the two misdeeds.

Lebanon is as complicated as we its people want it to be. We are part authors of this sorry tale we have been living since we became a modern state. We had agency, we made choices, ignored our sages’ warnings, laughed away their wise counsel, committed sins, made strategic mistakes, let loose our private greed at the expense of the public good, heedlessly indulged our petty sectarianisms, and killed one another time and again.

We are today at the end of our tether, barely hanging on by a couple of very tattered threads. We have the opportunity to attempt a sober, patient rescue of a body politic riddled with gaping and, unless remedied, fatal wounds.

Have we learned our lesson? Sooner than we think, we will have our answer.