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War
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the view
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by Tarek Atia |
Disbelief and wonder
April 15, 2003
| How quickly tag lines can change. The US invasion of Iraq –
code-named “Shock and Awe” – has suddenly become more like
“Disbelief and Wonder”. How else to describe the sudden
escalation of threats against Syria?
Speed is the name of the
game. Just a few moments after the battle for Baghdad was won, US
threats against Syria began to appear. And then, as the days went
by, rise in pitch in the most spectacular way. By yesterday, it was
all anyone on the news seemed to be talking about.
 Damascus
may want to learn some lessons from the Iraqi experiment. As in –
prepare yourselves now. After all, it doesn’t really matter
whether or not the Syrians deny having illegal weapons or helping
out the exiled Saddam regime. The only thing that seems to have any
bearing in these crazy times is whether or not the US administration
– controlled by hawks with a wide-ranging imperialistic agenda --
will really go through with their plans.
And that certainly makes for
a disturbing world-view. There is something to be said for having a
world policeman – as long as it’s a policeman you can trust, who
doesn't selectively choose whose crimes will be punished and whose
will be ignored.
I’m not the only one who
seems to be alarmed by this. Just yesterday, someone told me that if
the US actually does attack Syria, he would go through a complete
mental shift, and make it a life-long project to show everybody how
bad the US is. That sentiment comes from an American, by the way.
A glance at today’s Letters
to the Editor section of the Washington Post also reveals that the
greater US public is starting to reveal its severe discontent with
all this war mongering and muscle flexing – “By the end of the
week at least half the country will believe the 9/11 hijackers were
Syrian,” writes one reader, “and that the Syrian leaders are al
Qaeda in disguise! Where's Saddam? Where's Osama? Where's all Iraq's
WMD? I guess that's all irrelevant since we have to focus on Syria
now!”
My favorite comment, however,
was from another Washington Post reader – this one in favor of
attacking Syria -- who has obviously developed a carefully nuanced
view of the Middle East from watching the likes of Fox News. “If
we topple Syria,” he writes, “Iran will implode from within.”
Thank you so much for your
expertise. This must be the kind of mentality the administration is
pandering to – the armchair military planners who have no idea
whatsoever about the complexity of real politic, or the pain war
causes to real people.
For them, everything may be a
superficial sound bite -- but a deeper question remains: how long
will people keep listening to the nonsense before demanding
something better?
Send
your comments to Tarek
Atia
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