The world, apparently, has given up on Syria. We have yielded it to the terror of Putin and Assad against civilians. Worse yet, we are corralling the Syrian refugees back to the Assad stables of death. But most importantly, we have turned a blind eye to the Assad atrocities, which will only beget more radicalism and more violence. It looks like as if Syria no longer exists, or exists for a sinister purpose.
WHERE DID OUR HUMANITY GO
Many have written about our memory lapses on Syria. The latest comes from Anne Applebaum in an Op-Ed for the Washington Post in which she writes:
The crisis of Western values has many aspects, many faces. There is a decline in faith in liberal democracy, a loss of confidence in universal human rights, a collapse in support for all kinds of transnational projects…
But this same crisis — this same loss of Western self-confidence, this same collapse of faith in ideals — also has a bloodier, more violent face. That face is the ongoing war in Syria — or rather the slow, grinding, murderous endgame of the war in Syria. Right now, the Syrian government army, aided by its Russian allies, is fighting the last pockets of resistance in Idlib, the only remaining rebel province in northwest Syria. As these forces advance, they shred what remains of humanitarianism and the law of war.
In two paragraphs, Applebaum strips our humanity bare by hovering over the sick forest of our own making, as well as giving us a glimpse of the Syria tree slowly dying while we look unfazed, unconcerned. On Syria, our leaders have taken hostage their own conscious while muffling its capacity to jar them loose out of their inhuman slumber.
Credit Vladimir Putin for reminding us Russians are still capable of WWII atrocities, and Donald Trump for reminding us how hatred and apathy in U.S. politics are normalized, and even glorified.
ISIS IS KNOCKING ON THE DOOR AGAIN
Meanwhile, ISIS is re-surging because we left Assad free to kill at will. Not Vietnam, and not Iraq have yet to teach America that there is a direct relationship between cause and effect. The cause of Assad is radicalism. The effect of our lack of sympathy is violent radicalism.
Oppressive and violent liberalism and secularism give birth to violent religious hatred. Cause and effect, stupid!
What are the benefits we derive from chaos and destruction? More DoD contracts to U.S. businesses? Bigger military budget to “battle” for our way of life? More terror scare to control the masses? If Syria hops like popcorn in a movie theater, reaction to controlling events requires commitments, which come in all forms and shapes.
Killing civilians is the initiator of all initiators, which starts the cause and effect cycle. Maybe this is why a no-fly-zone, both Presidents Obama and Trump refused to implement, dies on arrival. Killing civilians is the spark that starts the whole cycle to capitalize on implementing policies and spreading precise ideas.
Syria exists all right. But we pretend otherwise because we need their women and children to die to implement one policy or another. To sell one idea or another. As if Arabs and Muslims are not hated enough in America.
Let the world remember how we muzzled the murmurs of our conscious with towels soaked with the blood of the innocent.
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