Skip to main content

Does Anyone Understand the Syrian Nightmare?

I am struggling more and more every day to understand the Syrian humanitarian crisis. I sympathize with those fleeing trying to save themselves and their families from the horrors happening every hour in Syria, horrors that have gone on far too long. It doesn’t matter to me whether they are refugees or migrants, they are escaping for their lives and any hope of a future, and they deserve a safe place to live. Have you seen Syria? Who can live there now? It is a place of utter devastation and ruin. Why aren’t the Arab nations, including Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates doing more to help these people? Why aren’t we? So far, according to NPR radio, we have taken in 1,500 refugees. That’s deplorable. I know we have given money and arms and the Syrian catastrophe is a complex situation but surely we can do better to help these desperate people. European nations have so far, except for Germany, been stubbornly indifferent to the mass of refugees risking their lives to get to safety. And many of those nations are doing very little to help them. Some just turn them away. But in spite of all of that what mystifies me the most is how is it in this day and time that a tiny country like Syria is able to endlessly create so much misery and chaos in the world? Is there no solution to the Syrian political quagmire? Can nothing be done to end the violent, inhuman, deranged control of Assad? Is NATO helpless? Does the Arab League have no interest in this mess? Where are the world negotiators who have brought sanity and peace to other warring countries? Or are we simply witnessing the complicity of corrupt nations everywhere who have some financial or military interest in letting Assad and Syria carry on its savage implacable slaughter of human life? Are we just to assume there is no solution to this cruelty?

 (c) Timothy Moody
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

OPINION PAGE:

  OPINION PAGE © 2024 Timothy Moody The apparent assassination attempt against Donald Trump last Sunday afternoon at his Trump International Golf Club was foiled by the Secret Service. Details are still coming in about it, and it's not yet known why the suspect, Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, apparently wanted to shoot Trump. The botched attempt was amateurish in every way, just as the one in July was by a kid 150 yards from Trump.  Conspiracy theorists are having a field day.  The former President is, of all things, blaming these attempts on his life with what he called the “violent rhetoric” of President Biden and VP Harris. Of course, that is absurd, especially coming from Trump, who has consistently been guilty of that very thing since he became president in 2016 and even before.  His speeches, X posts, and comments on his Truth Social platform have been endlessly filled with threatening language and incitement to violence.  He suggested those protest...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Losing Strategy

OPINION PAGE (c) 2024 Timothy Moody   The Republican strategy to mock and judge others has passed into some form of insatiable, all-devouring nastiness. It is so poisonous and contemptuous that it is now just evil.  Republican Governor of Arkansas, Sara Huckabee Sanders, suggested to a crowd of Trump supporters Tuesday night that Kamala Harris can't be humble because she doesn't have any children of her own.  When will Americans decide they don't want government leaders who are so arrogantly insensitive, as Sanders was, that they offend everyone?  This crude, villainous rhetoric transcends political partisanship. It’s evil, dangerous, and insulting.  The poet Ezra Pound’s brief lines are appropriate here, “Pull down your vanity, How mean your hates” To suggest that someone cannot be humble because they don't have children is not just a cheap political comment. It's an attack on a person’s humanity and worth.  And that is now, and has been fo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Actions Make a Difference

“We make progress in society only if we stop cursing and complaining about its shortcomings and have the courage to do something about them.” ~ Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Physician/Author Pictured here is Kikuko Shinjo, 89 years old, a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bomb blast. As a 17-year old nursing student she helped nurse victims of the carnage back to health. Many of them died in her care. She says she holds no grudge against America and encourages interaction between the Japanese and Americans. She has devoted her life to peace, saying, “I want all the people around the world to be friends, and I want to make my country peaceful without fighting.” Today she makes colorful paper cranes and donates them to the Children’s Peace Monument at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.
Post a Comment
Read more