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Wednesday, September 18, 2002
 
(On Not) Fighting Terror- Syrian Style

This is a post for all those who think that the US should listen to the UN. I will ask now, and continue to ask, why should we listen to a group of slave-owning thugs and crackpot dictators about how to conduct our international affairs. Why should the pretenders and backward, barbarous nations of the Near East and Africa compell our attention? A harsh judgement, you say?

Consider the current head of the security council, Syria. (Let's not talk about the head of the "Human Rights" Commission, Libya) They were having a terrorist problem in the 80s. Here is how they dealt with it: "Another example of this double standard occurred in the Syrian city of Hama and in refugee camps in Sabra and Shatila. The troubles in Hama began with an uprising headed by the radical group the Muslim Brothers in 1982. The government responded swiftly. Troops were sent, supported by armor, artillery, and aircraft, and within a very short time they had reduced a large part of the city to rubble. The number killed was estimated, by Amnesty International, at somewhere between ten thousand and twenty-five thousand. The action, which was ordered and supervised by the Syrian President, Hafiz al-Assad, attracted little attention at the time, and did not prevent the United States from subsequently courting Assad, who received a long succession of visits from American Secretaries of State James Baker, Warren Christopher, and Madeleine Albright, and even from President Clinton. It is hardly likely that Americans would have been so eager to propitiate a ruler who had perpetrated such crimes on Western soil, with Western victims."

A comparison to the way Israel, Ameirca, or (post-colonial) Britian fights terrrorism? I think not!