I swear to be faithful to the homeland, to the army and to the flag...

In recent days, seeing the army withdraw from certain southern villages like Rmeich, Ain Ebel, Debel, or Qlayaa stirs something inside that is hard to name. It's not just sadness. It's older than that, deeper, as if this retreat confirms an intuition we've long suppressed: that of a country slowly slipping out of itself.

In cafes, in the messages we send each other in the evening, we feel that something has cracked. But emotion, however accurate it may be, is not enough to understand what is happening. And as long as we remain immersed in it, we see nothing.

An army is not meant to commit suicide. It is meant to last long enough to still be useful when it truly matters. Sending men without cover against an overwhelming power is not courage. It is ordering their death while calling it bravery.

Because one thing must be understood. There are those who can hold out until the end, until the last man, because they do not respond to the same logic. Their orders come from elsewhere, from a foreign capital that counts losses without ever watching villages burn. For them, the dead are useful. Lebanese territory is merely a maneuvering ground. What comes after the war is not their concern.

But a national army does not have the right to reason like them. If it destroys itself in a battle it cannot win, it's not a lost battle; it's the country itself that perishes with it. And afterwards, there is no one left to hold anything.

So yes, it retreats. It's hard to watch. But this retreat is not a flight; it's a calculation, the only one that allows it to stand firm tomorrow.

George Washington abandoned New York in 1776, and the Loyalists mocked him for months.

The Russians left Moscow to Napoleon in 1812.

The British evacuated in haste from Dunkirk in 1940.

They were all called cowards. They all won. This is no coincidence.

A captain is not measured by the waves he faces. Nor is he measured by the violence of the storm. He is measured by the number of men he brings back alive. A captain who sinks with his crew because he refused to change course is not a hero. He is a wrecker.

A father does not take up his rifle to die at his doorstep. He gets his family out through the back, he retreats, he flees even if he is called a coward, because his duty is not to die standing: it is to ensure his loved ones live.

Today, the army is both this captain and this father. It does not retreat out of weakness. It retreats because it has millions of children to bring back.

We must also say what we prefer not to say. Lebanon will not win a war against Israel. This is not a judgment; it's a fact. But an army does not exist merely to win wars. It exists so that after the war, there is still something left to govern, someone to prevent everyone from settling their scores alone in the street. Without an army, there is no state. And a country without a state means civil war knocking at the door again.

Those who want it to stay at all costs are not asking for courage. They are asking for blood. They demand that it hold encircled positions, without secure supply lines, without troop rotation, without air superiority, without sufficient ammunition or continuous logistical support. They are asking a unit to operate in a chain-of-command breakdown, cut off from its rear, exposed, frozen, turned into a target. This is not a defensive posture. It is a condemnation to attrition, until collapse. And when there is no army left, they will understand too late that they have destroyed the only thing protecting them.

And then there's this soldier. Twenty years old, maybe less. He didn't choose the uniform to leave; he chose it to stay, specifically, to hold a place, to watch over houses at night, to learn the faces of a village that wasn't his own.

That morning, he received the order to pack up. He put away his belongings silently, got into the truck, and didn't look back. Not because it cost him nothing. But because he knew that if he looked, he wouldn't leave. In the truck, his hands trembled. Not from fear. From the weight of what he was leaving behind.

This country still stands because of people like him. Lebanon has survived things that would have killed any other country. It survived because men like this soldier continued to wake up in the morning, put on their uniform, and hold their post without knowing if anyone, anywhere, even knew they existed.

An officer once took this oath: "I swear by Almighty God to be faithful to the homeland, the army, and the flag." As long as he upholds these words, Lebanon does not fall. It bleeds, it retreats, it is exhausted, but it does not fall. Retreat, yes. Betray this oath, never.