The statement issued by the Lebanese Ministry of Defense after the Roush incident is pivotal in the current political moment and in the history of civil-military relations in Lebanon. The statement declared that the army’s mission is “to avert sedition, prevent the situation from sliding into clashes, deter those who threaten civil peace, and consolidate the pillars of national unity.” While it lamented “ingratitude,” “bias,” and “placing the street’s burdens on the guardians of legitimacy,” it affirmed that the army “has a president who protects it, a commander who watches over it, and a people who love it and see in it the remaining hope after God and Lebanon.”

It is difficult to pack such a large amount of nonsense in so few words. No, the “people” do not see the army as a source of hope after God and Lebanon, but rather as the institution whose commander, Emile Bustani, signed the shameful Cairo Agreement in 1969 hoping to become president or to see Fouad Chehab return to the presidency. Then the army engaged in the war of elimination in the eastern region; its leadership easily adapted to the Syrian occupation later when its intelligence harshly dealt with sovereign students in the 1990s who refused to accept the occupation; and it has since adapted to the Shiite militia’s control over the country, always without difficulty or friction. The military arrogance that decorates itself with the idea that the Lebanese place the army “after God and Lebanon” is a level of intellectual frivolity worthy of third-world militaries.

However, the issue is not here. The issue is that the Ministry of Defense’s statement is a coup against legitimacy and the constitution. Coups do not always mean columns of tanks heading to occupy a presidential palace. There are velvet coups that happen without a single slap when the military decides to ease the constitution’s provisions. Furthermore, coups do not necessarily mean that an outsider opposition seizes power. There is what is called a “self-coup” (Autogolpe), which is when a faction inside the government, legitimately in power, uses its mechanisms to dismantle legitimacy. Essentially, this is what the Lebanese Ministry of Defense did with its recent statement.

Why? First, because it assigned the army a political mission: protecting “national unity,” which is typical of third-world military coups. For example, the Turkish military once assigned itself the mission of protecting secularism. Latin American armies gave themselves the mission of fighting the left, even if citizens voted for it. In democratic countries, the army has no political mission; its sole function is to implement the executive authority’s orders. Period. Those who dislike orders from the military have the right to resign, but the military as military has no say in their country’s politics. It is clear from the Lebanese Ministry of Defense’s statement that it grants itself the right to decide which orders it wants to apply and which it rejects, considering them contradictory to protecting “national unity,” i.e., the political mission it assigned itself outside the constitution. This is a velvet coup.

Second, it is clear from the Ministry of Defense’s statement that it sees the army’s instructions as coming from the presidency and its leadership. Notably absent was any reference to the Council of Ministers, let alone that it is the source of executive authority according to the Taif Agreement constitution. Clearly: the Council of Ministers, through its president, gave instructions that fall within its constitutional powers, but the security leaders who reached their positions constitutionally decided that the constitution does not concern them, nor do the instructions of the Prime Minister. This is a self-coup.

Joseph Aoun is directly responsible for all the above because he personally chose the Minister of Defense and the army commander. The criticisms directed at them in recent days after the Roush events are justified, provided no one forgets that the Minister of Defense and the army commander are allies of Joseph Aoun. He is thus responsible for their political movement. Their involvement with Nabih Berri and the Shiite militia against the Prime Minister and against the hopes of the Lebanese that their state not remain failed and submissive to a fundamentalist militia means politically that Joseph Aoun himself is implicated.

The Ministry of Defense’s narrative that it acts to avert sedition is rejected by Joseph Aoun, Michel Mounsey, and Rudolf Heikal. Hassan Nasrallah is accused in popular consciousness of killing Rafik Hariri, the leader of Beirut’s Sunnis; and now Nasrallah’s “party” commemorates his memory in Beirut, not far from the site of Hariri’s assassination. What greater provocation to the Sunnis than this? Or to any Lebanese not complicit with the Shiite militia? The army’s withdrawal from the scene is not protection from sedition but paving the way for it.

The Lebanese people’s harvest with Joseph Aoun has become bitter. Emile Lahoud did what he did when he was president but did not waste an international opportunity given to Lebanon because it did not exist. Joseph Aoun, on the other hand, wastes an international interest in Lebanon that may not be repeated for decades. And if Joseph Aoun thinks that the Lebanese did not notice that Donald Trump met Ahmed Al-Shar’a in New York and did not meet him, he is mistaken. Joseph Aoun’s failure to disarm the Shiite militia reserves his name on a list that also includes the signatories of the Cairo Agreement, the Tripartite Agreement, and of course those who did not sign the May 17 Agreement.

And those who did not behave as they should have in their first presidential term, with all the momentum, hope, and international support, will not behave better in the remaining years of the term. He should leave.

If he does not, everyone who rejects the Shiite militia’s control over Lebanon should realize that confronting the weapons necessarily means confronting its protectors politically. It has become clear that Joseph Aoun is among them.