Barely a country and a lesson never learnt

Driving calmly in my car today, I was thinking about the famous stupid statement by the former pope about Lebanon that is being echoed in almost every official document here, stating that "Lebanon is more than a country, it is a message". The Lebanese, so in love with vagueness and vague statements about their country, like "Lebanon is a cedar", or "Lebanon is too small to be divided and too big to be swollen", or "Lebanon is... is... is... more than words can say...it is very big", as a famous singer once said, etc. etc. etc. examples are innumerable. So I was thinking about the pope who said that Lebanon, barely a country, is more than a country, when I pass by the famous Holiday Inn. I look at the huge holes in almost every square meter of the building in every single floor, and I could imagine the mortars firing on real human beings inside not so many years ago, but before I was born. And I thought that in wars (maybe strictly Lebanese wars) people survive by mistake. They don’t die by mistake. That's when I remembered that I have heard somewhere before a similar idea. Only now I know where; Sami Hawwat once said it "I live for lack of death".