“Events dear boy, events…” is what British Prime Minister
(1957 - 63) Harold Macmillan was supposed to have said when asked what was the
most difficult part of being a statesman.
No event can have rattled the current political stasis
more than the sudden toppling of the murderous psychopathic dictator Assad.
After a stalemate that has lasted over a decade the Che-esque figure of Al-Julani – leader of the rebels – has pushed through to Damascus and the monster
has fled to Papa Putin in Russia.
Misery loves company but so does evil. And as the rebels uncover the abandoned Assad lifestyle - the dozens of cars, the golden interiors to palatial abodes - the similarities to Trump stare right back at us. A spoiled poisoned brat who inherited power and wealth from his father. More on that maybe in another post.
This is an old doodle of mine from 2017 – not the start of the
new Assad horrors - but an indication of just how long and how hard Syria has
suffered while the world did nothing.
However, there is one thing almost as upsetting as the
way the West sat back while Assad destroyed his own country, used chemical
weapons against his own people (his father previously slaughtered – for example
– 40k citizens of Hama in one month).That one thing is the sound of gross
hypocrisy coming from US and EU spokespeople in relation to Al-Julani – leader of
the rebel movement that has ousted the immovable monster.
Many are speculating about removing the $10m bounty
from the rebel leader’s head – and suggesting that sanctions that have so
harmed Syrian civilians for years will be removed ‘if he behaves himself’. Oil
taken by the US ‘may’ be returned if he plays nice.
Where were these attitudes when Assad was slaughtering
and starving the people of Syria?
*
THANKS by the way to Russell - journo at The Herald. I'd used similar text in a letter to that paper and he spotted that I'd credited Assad Jnr with the Hama slaughter actually perpetrated by his father. I suppose you get to the point where one genocidal maniac merges with another... But no excuse for sloppiness.