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Even in a nation whose political class if often staffed with opportunists and shifting alliances almost always based on narrow sectarian considerations or foreign patronage, the Druze community leader Walid Jumblatt may shame all the rest in his chameleon ways.
The head of the Progressive Socialist Party, Jumblatt is the heir to a political party his late leftist father has established in the early years prior to the Lebanese Civil War of 1975. Back then the PSP was a genuinely left-wing movement which avoided sectarianism and preached secularism, and as such was able to unite much of the non-Druze community behind it as well. But today the PSP is merely another mark in Lebanon's confessional class with its sole interest guarding the political standing of the Druze community in a nation where sect identity trumps as else.
In that effort, Jumblatt has more than once shifted his alignment based on where he thought he could secure the most leverage for the Druze. For decades Jumblatt was a loyal client of the Syrians even though the Syrians (most likely) were behind the assassination of his father, Kamel Jumblatt. But after the assassination of Sunni Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, Jumblatt not only abandoned the alliance with Syria but also spoke in ultra-nationalist tones against not only the Syrian regime but also migrant Syrian workers in the country who had come under attack, even murders, by Lebanese nationalists who blamed the Syrian regime for a serious of assassinations against the country's Sunni and Christian leaders.
Jumblatt became an eager client of the Americans, French and Saudis and accepted White House invites. March 14 was his base. But once the United States miscalculated in Lebanon and suffered setbacks and the Syrians started to roll back into the country with heavy influence, Jumblatt slowly began to ditch March 14 and started to utter favorable words about Syrian and even went to Damascus to apologize for his past condemnations.
Not that morph from March 14 to the opposition March 8 is complete as Jumblatt has entirely forsaken March 14 and endorsed Hezbollah's position.
This man is a man for seasons and will shift to whoever can grant him more leverage. Forget about being un-principles, you'd have to have principles in the first place to understand the negation of them. But Jumblatt is simply a man without principles, none whatsoever.
