News and Opinion:
Dictatorship, military intervention and false binaries in Syria

Thursday, January 19th, 2012

Washington DC – After almost five decades, when the time came to publicly oppose authoritarian rule in Syria, onewould have thought that it was the rational and decent thing to do. And it is. More than that, it is incumbent on anyonewho cares about Syrians (let us leave “Syria” alone for a moment) to struggle for the establishment of a politicalsystem that is free(r) of all forms of oppression. So, what is the problem?
Why fighting dictatorship is, well, intuitive

It is easy, rational and just to adopt unequivocal opposition to the decades-long history of the Syrian regime’sauthoritarian rule. It is equally easy, rational, and just to severely condemn and oppose the regime’s 10-monthcrushing of independent protesters. Regime supporters and some in the anti-imperialist camp retort that some ofthese protesters are agents of external forces or armed gangs.

While there may be a grain of truth in this argument, it is empty. It is, in fact an insult to the intelligence of any Syriaobserver. It overlooks the regime’s brutality in the last 10 months of uprising. It baldly erases the decades ofoppression, detention, imprisonment, silencing, excommunication and torture that the regime has dealt to the merehint of opposition. That regime which turns 50 next year.

 

originally appeared here:

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/01/201211713546736564.html

 

 

 


Older Post

Newer Post



Comments (0)


There are no comments for this post so far.

Post a comment