Following the assassination of former PM Rafik Hariri in 2005, politicians and activists were debating how to brand the opposition movement to demand the immediate withdrawal of the Syrian regime from Lebanon, which was accused of killing Hariri. Many people at the time were eager to pronounce it a revolution, something which the Western media jumped on and coined as “the Cedar Revolution”.
However, Samir Kassir, a prominent columnist and intellectual, later to be assassinated, warned that it was perhaps more appropriate to describe it as an uprising rather than a revolution. Kassir’s reasoning was plain and simple: the Lebanese had neither the stamina nor the vison to wage a revolution. What was needed was a swift political protest movement with a limited agenda, capable of achieving short-term gains.