Sam responded to a comment posted yesterday from a supporter of the Syrian opposition: "I follow your blog and have never emailed you my views, but the comment by
the Syrian opposition supporter really annoyed me:
"The reason the people did not react with the Syrian revolution in the same
way they did with Egypt and Tunisia is not related to NATO. The reader assumes
reading your reason that March 15th protests start in Daraa , march 18th they
demand NATO to interfere. You know very well that the requests for foreign
intervention did not come early on, but required months of brutal , savage
repression for a peaceful protests. Plus it took over 6 months for the
opposition to agree on something and before that the revolution was going
without it."
I don't understand these kinds of comments. For decades many have rightly
claimed that Middle East problems are partly due to Western interference. Now,
we have government suppression of protests, we call on these very same Western
powers to intervene. It makes my stomach churn.
As for his comment about Syria supporting Hezbollah for sectarian reasons,
I sense that he is trying to frame the conflict in sectarian (and bigoted)
terms. The Asad regime does not support Hezbollah for sectarian reasons (the
regime has essentially supported every side of the Lebanese political spectrum
at one point or another). Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they support
Hezbollah for noble reasons - of course this is not the case.
Sure Syria has a crappy dictatorship, there is no doubt about that. The
regime is purely self-interested and is responsible for disgusting human rights
abuses. I originally had great sympathy for the opposition movement in the
country, but too much has happened since then and I now find myself not
supporting them at all. We had the racist chants, sectarian killings and calls
for foreign intervention. Not to mention the manipulations carried out by Saudi
Arabia and the heavy involvement of the reactionary muslim brotherhood."
