[Why anyone thought that negotiation with basher would do any good is beyond me, I may be terribly wrong and totally naive but it seemed obvious from the beginning that Basher & associates would listen only to the language they speak. He continues to discredit himself with every move and I'm looking forward to the day when Syrians’ demands for such things as freedom, dignity democracy & human rights will be taken seriously. If we let the slaughter continue, we’re saying in effect Syrians and Arabs don’t deserve the same basic rights that we take for granted in the West. Not only Syrians but the world too would be a lot better off without the Basher daily death quota –cannily limiting his murders to a fixed quota every day just short of the "massacre" limit, say around 100 per day, but all the more intolerable for a normal conscience. Of course without any professional press permitted inside Syria, no one can prove any of it is happening, so maybe that should be Annans's non negotiable first condition: to let in the press to verify any agreement. I write out of anger at Basher and concern for the gutsy Syrian people of whatever sect who have braved the onslaught for over a year and deserve admiration but even more help. If liberals don't start making more noise about the basic rights being demanded by Syrians today, it may be the McCains who eventually get the credit for saving this population... We know a monster like basher can't last forever with most of his population and the world against him so to whom will the Syrians be grateful in the end?]
[[I bracket these thoughts to emphasize their uselessness and the fact that we live here in a less drastic but analogous way.]]
Yours truly,
Harry James
1 comment:
I wouldn't go so far as to call them "useless," although it's difficult to imagine how "analogous" anyone's circumstances could be when compared to these, unless he lived in, say, Somalia.
Also, I cannot -- nor apparently can even our intelligence agencies -- presume to know what is in the minds of Basher's political opponents. We just don't know much about the opposition. Some may indeed make "demands for such things as freedom, dignity, democracy & human rights." Others might eventually become as nasty as Basher if given the reins of power. How did you happen to find out what all their demands are?
I seriously doubt, however, that any of them would have much truck with the likes of Thomas Paine -- an atheist who would last about five minutes if he were thoughtless enough to voice his humanist opinions on religion in a hasty speech among the populous of our allies in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan or Pakistan.
Finally -- and I mean this as a friendly criticism -- it is difficult on the eyes to read text presented in such a dense block, which is not unlike the boilerplate used by the health insurance companies. I can assure you that readers greatly appreciate paragraph breaks or some other judicious spacing.
It reminds me of the letters I would receive from the nuttiest legal clients. Invariably, these arrived in the form of concrete blocks of words going on for pages -- vast, single-spaced descriptions of some perceived slight. They had gotten so wrapped up in themselves -- almost like Dostoevsky characters -- that they had absolutely no comprehension as to how any of that word blockage appeared to our dear reader. I wouldn't say the text below is nearly as inconsiderate, however, if allowed to run on much longer, then it would run the risk.
Paul Perkins
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