I don't usually write about politics on this blog but I am so depressed about what is going on in Syria at the moment that I felt I had to do something. I ended up putting a post on Facebook. Here it is in full:
"I saw a Muslim woman sitting on a bench near our house today. She was just staring into space. The chances are she was a Syrian with family back in Damascus. I can't imagine what was going through her head. What is going on in Syria right now is a shame on all of us. For the first time in my life, I feel ashamed to be a human being."
I got replies from people who feel the same as me and one reply from an ex-colleague from the university. This is what he said.
"I'm quite tormented by this. Our governments with our knowledge are waging wars and responsible for huge number of deaths and other misery. Are we like citizens of the third reich who just washed their hands and let misery envelope continents. Personally I think we are. We are the evil empire."
Of course, there is some truth in this. At least I can put something on FB. The Germans in WW2 could not do that. Worse still, if they had spoken out against the Nazi regime, they would have ended up in the camps.
There are also similarities between the League of Nations in the 1930s and the UN today. The League was incapable of dealing with the violence in Abyssinia. The UN appears to be hamstrung and incapable of doing anything about the civilian deaths in Damascus.
The BBC reports that France's UN ambassador François Delattre said the UN's inability to help Syrian civilians would result in a devastating loss of credibility.
This warning could easily have been made in the 1930s and directed at the League of Nations and its inability to deal effectively with the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, the Spanish civil war and the second Sino-Japanese war. The League failed because it had no standing army, the USA was not a member while other members could not agree on a strategy. Some of these failings are facing the UN today along with the uncomfortable truth that several UN member states are themselves engaged in Syria.
So what can I do? Without a leader, my voice - along with millions of others can never be heard. Well, perhaps I'll put another post on FB and ease my conscience. Then, perhaps, I will sleep better and my dreams will be a little less troubling.
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