February 22, 2012

Only last night I was watching a report on Channel 4 News (British) by Marie Colvin. She was being interviewed by telephone and spoke of the horrid conditions that the people of Homs are having to endure. Today I hear that she has been killed, along with a French journalist and several Syrians during heavy shelling. The killing continues and with every day the depth of horror that I feel increases. I just don't know what else I can do apart from go back and pick up a rifle. Yet what riles me most is the level of sophistry and outright lies that I have to endure day in and day out by people who continue to justify the existence of this beastly regime.

A rare few might be honest enough to admit that they are thugs and support their master's thuggery. The more dishonest ones cry crocodile tears for the dead, voice their deep worry about the future, and then try to ask, to beg, to plead, to encourage, to do anything, just to have one more person give Assad the benefit of the doubt. To give this brutal dictator just a second, an instant more of power and control over the country. One moment he is the defender of secularism, the second he is the brave champion of the Palestinian cause, another moment he is described as the best of a bad lot [the Arab leaders]. Conspiracies, lies, intricately constructed theories, statistics and arguments are deployed to protect this master of shadows and his kingdom of smoke and mirrors. These people, the defenders of the Lie, serve their master for reasons known only to them. It baffles me why anybody would wish to keep such an animal - ironically Assad means lion - in power.

What makes me the saddest is to see people I once respected and thought of as reasonable, become almost hysterical - or at least wilfully ignorant - to what we are seeing. It is as if Syria has become the modern day tower of Babel, and overnight we have all been struck with a curse that makes us unable to understand one another. We gesticulate and babble wildly in different tongues, incredulous about why the other can't see our point of view.