Syria: Where is the Outrage? Where is the Outcry?

Where is the outrage? Where are the cries for justice as the people of Homs, men, women and children, are pounded indiscriminately by a merciless tyrant son of a vile and vicious tyrant?  As the world leaders wring their hands pretending to care, Assad and his “armed gang” couldn’t care less and thumb their nose at the rest of world.  For the West, Syria does not have enough oil to matter.  They care enough to let Syria unravel to break Iran’s influence but don’t care enough to help achieve an outcome that benefits the Syrian people.  China and Russia, on the other hand, claim to be protecting Syria’s sovereignty but what they really want is to send a message to their own restive populations. Their people, however, know better.

That world leaders play their predictable games is no surprise.  What really gets my blood boiling, however, is the mealy mouthed response to the Syrian uprising from a clique of leftwing Arab intellectuals and academics, many living in the West.  They were all for the Tunisian uprising and the Egyptian uprising because it fit into their anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist world view and left-wing narrative.  There was never any question in other Arab spring uprisings about unbalanced reporting, and never a suggestion that news relayed by activists in those countries represented anything but the truth.  All that changed when it came to Syria, the self-proclaimed bastion of anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, steadfastness, pan-Arabism and resistance against Israeli and American hegemony.  Suddenly, there are two sides to the story of the popular uprising. Activists in Syria, they claim, are part of a media conspiracy of disinformation and regularly exaggerated the numbers of the wounded and dead.  You see, the local activist lied; it was not really 200 hundred civilians who died who in Homs the other day, it was “only” 150!  Imagine that! Not only do activists lie according to them, but any media outlet that reports activist information and videos becomes complicit in this media conspiracy and is labeled pro-American or pro-Saudi.  They seem to gloss over the fact if information is hard to get in Syrian, it is because the regime has has rarely allowed independent journalists to cover the uprising.

Oh how I hate ideologues with a passion; left-wing or right-wing, they are all the same.  They so easily morph into demagogues. They speak in clichés and labels that disconnect them from reality and reasoned thought.  When you mention the Syrian uprising to a member of the aforementioned clique, the response you get is a torrent of disconnected clichés: imperialism… colonialism… conspiracy… Western hegemony…   Zionist… racist … genocidal entity…etc.  Yes,  well I know all of that, you say, but that’s not what I am talking about. I am talking about the more than 7000 Syrians killed by a Syrian genocidal maniac.  How about you get off you high horse of meaningless cliches and do something about the people whose loss you pretend to be grieving? How about supporting a divestment campaign? How about organizing a Tartous flotilla or two to get medical supplies to Homs? The worst part of this clique’s waffling attitude towards the Syrian dictatorship is that Assad and his supporters use their writings as fodder to bolster their contorted narrative of a worldwide conspiracy against the Syrian regime.

Fortunately, the people on the ground in the Middle East are not looking through the distorted prisms of fixed ideologies and have shown support for the Syrian people.  Unlike the clique in their ivory towers, the people get it. Here are Palestinians in Haifa, Lebanese citizens from south Lebanon,  Jordanians, and of course Yemenis. Here are Palestinians who clearly don't buy Assad's expedient claim to the mantel of "resistance" and exclaim "not in our name and not in Palestine's name will you commit these crimes, you murderers".  

This support will not prevent the continued carnage in Homs, but is nevertheless important for the morale of the Syrian people in their fight for freedom and dignity.