Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Observations from the Coffee Shop 9.4

Because of  my brief post yesterday at breakfast today I was forced, forced, to come up with some sort of definitive opinion on Syria. What is going to happen is the easy part. There will be some limited bombing, that's just a given. What is harder is what I think of it. As I said in my post, damned if you do damned if you don't.

Off the top of my head, and with too little coffee, I think it's something that needs to be done. That isn't to say I like the idea. To just stand by and watch, debate, to do nothing as the slaughter goes on, I just can't stomach that. Rather be damned now than be damned by history. What is more important is what happens next. I don't mean more bombing or arming the opposition, whatever that is, but what we can do to help the millions of refugees with winter approaching.

I was going to make this an update to yesterday's post but than I read an article from Foreign Policy, I know, called "Muse of the Revolution"  which is about Libyan novelist Hisham Matar and written by Syrian writer Amal Hanano. It's very good and you should read it. I wanted to pass on the following paragraph.

"How do you measure time during a revolution, during a war? The seasons pass, and no one places bets on a date for Assad's fall anymore. Syrian time is measured by massacres and tragedies and the growing number of dead. Remember when it was 2,000? 10,000? 40,000? 70,000? 100,000? Remember?"

If nothing else history has a good memory.