A Humane Syria?

A Humane Syria?

Illustration: A snapshot of what matters most to most today.  The discount bin of Chinese items, sold in the USA, in a German grocery store.  I think Batavia, Illinois is involved.  Some of the employees speak fluent colloquial German and I find this a challenge, as my German is primarily literary and philosophical.   At any rate, the illustration is an image of reality in the United States.  I may submit it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art as it clearly rivals Andy Warhol.

          With competition like that, what chance does a rational or reasonable understanding of the Mid-East have in today’s intellectual climate?  Well, we will try anyway.

          It all started with a visit to the City of Homs by the U.S. Ambassador to Syria who is now hiding in Washington, coming up for air from time to time to say nasty things about the Syrian leader.  The corporate news show footage from Syrian cities with dead bodies discovered wrapped in some sort of tent cloth and we are told that Assad told his forces to kill them.  The people reading the news and producing it have trouble keeping the footage straight and sometimes an amputated person relevant to the Charles Taylor trial at The Hague gets thrown in for good measure.  We are told that Mia Farrow had something to do with it.  We see Republicans promising an iron fist and it is very hard to write with an iron fist.  Still, we are told we have to arm the opposition. 

          But who is the opposition?  They are not just the people from Homs anymore.  There is no single description of them and they range from what Israel calls terrorists, meaning anyone who is not Jewish, to Christians and Sunni’s.  As a matter of fact, Turkey seems involved as well as Lebanon.  Iran and Russia are involved too, with Russia not trusting the U.S. at the U.N. anymore after the double-cross over Libya.  Things have gotten so vicious that we are hearing what songs were downloaded from I-Tunes and the Assad family has been accused of using the term OMG in e-mails.  These are evil people indeed.  There is no end of the perfidy to which such people can sink.  We even know that he was an eye doctor in England and we all know what sort of people they are.  Have we no heart?  We have to save the people of Syria from a fate worse than death.  Hillary Clinton says so.  Israel has been strangely silent all this time.  Not a word from Israel.  What are they hiding?

          Well, there has been word from Israel, although we are only aware of it second hand as we find it extremely difficult to get Hebrew translated.  Ehud Barak announced on Thursday, May 31, the day before the first of this month, that Israel is ready to arm the opposition.  Naturally, Israel never listens to anything the U.N. says, including resolution 242, so it is quite likely that they will go through with it.  Assad could unite all these diverse opposition factions behind him simply by leading an assault against the occupied Golan Heights, but he does not want a war with anyone.  Of course, if the opposition is further armed, Russia will simply further arm Assad.  There will not be a two-way civil war.  There will be Assad and then there will be 19 other factions fighting Assad and each other.  This is why Israel offers to lead the charge and that Syria should be partitioned into several areas, sort of like the idea Biden had about Iraq.  In other words, a real mess.

          An interesting aspect of this is why so many are jumping in.  Well, there is no cost, that’s why.  Who is going to criticize anyone for saying people in Syria deserve humane treatment?  Where is the Pro-Syrian bloc to criticize?  Politicians find this an easy way to show how caring they are – and it also gives them an opportunity to demonstrate how huge their dick is.  We gotta bomb Assad, yeah, that will preserve human rights.

          Recent reports have Assad’s men stopping a bus of factory workers, forcing them off, and executing them.  Well, it is difficult to believe that a leader would execute people working in a factory when he desperately wants people to settle down and go back to work.  Now they talk about towns other than Homs since we are told he has reduced that den of renegades to a pile of brick and dust (he hasn’t – it still stands).  They mention Houla (which either means ‘monster’ or ‘beautiful’ in Arabic) and also Aleppo, a town that hasn’t been mentioned widely since Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the witches’ scene (probably written by Marston, anyway). 

          Standing up for human rights in Syria takes as much moral courage as the celebrities during the Vietnam War who would boldly announce on network television that they were in favor of reading.   

          We live in troubled times, no doubt about it.  I started this with the intention of surveying the position we have taken in all the states so far, but too much information about Syria, which is not in the corporate coverage, makes this edition quite sufficient for the time being all by itself.

          Enjoy June, fellow citizens.

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In case you are wondering, Tahrir square is filled with protestors again.  Mubarak got a life sentence and, when that was announced, people cheered.  Then it was announced that the remaining defendants, including his Sons, were found not guilty.  That is why they are so angry, not because Mubarak escaped the death penalty.  Information to the contrary is simply wrong.