Syrian Helicopters Join the Battle for Aleppo
I received an email the other day from a reader wondering why I even bother to write about what is happening in Syria.
My correspondent correctly pointed out that the world will not intervene militarily and that there is very little that can be done to protect Syrian civilians as well as alleviate their suffering.
Why, then, write about an event? The reason is that we are, all of us, witnesses to history. And when wanton slaughter is being perpetrated and ordinary people are caught in the middle of momentous events with no real escape and only the option to endure, someone should be telling their story. It may not be 100% accurate — neither side has covered themselves in glory when it comes to the truth of what’s happening — but there is no denying the reality of the bullets, shells, bombs, and the long knives of President Assad’s cutthroat Shabbiha militia who appear to be taking great pleasure in sectarian cleansing. For all our sakes, we should not be looking away from what is happening, but rather focus on the plight of innocents — and remember.
The battle has moved to Syria’s largest city and commercial hub, Aleppo. An armored column is beginning to assault rebel strong points, while helicopter gunships and tanks fire into civilian neighborhoods with no care for who they are killing.
The Syrian military intensified its offensive on the country’s commercial center of Aleppo Saturday, pounding rebel-controlled areas with tanks and helicopter gunships.
Activists posted video on YouTube of the sound of shelling and gunfire and columns of black smoke rising over buildings in the Aleppo neighborhood of Salaheddin on Saturday.
Rami Abd al-Rahman, the Director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told VOA by telephone that fighting intensified early in the morning.
He says there was gunfire and bombardments by the military, while residents reported that army tanks clashed with opposition fighters in the adjoining neighborhoods of Hamdariyya and Salaheddin. They also reported helicopters over the city.
Al-Rahman says it is the first time tanks have shelled this area.
He said the fighting was very intense in Aleppo for several hours and there are dozens of dead and injured.
Pro-government media in Syria have warned that what they describe as the “mother of all battles” looms in the city of nearly three million residents. The United States, Britain and the United Nations have voiced growing alarm about the potential for an imminent massacre there.
It’s hard to imagine the effect on buildings and people of several helicopter gunships loosing rockets and Gatling guns on a modern city neighborhood.
The outcome of this civil war, as we have seen elsewhere in the Arab world, will almost certainly not be good for the ordinary Syrian. Whatever promise of “democracy” they receive from the victors will not be realized. More likely, another Muslim Brotherhood dominated government will rise and make the world a more perilous place.
But as civilized people, we have a duty to bear witness to the uncivilized brutality happening in Syria, regardless of whether the endgame would favor US interests or not.
Syria appears to have a truely evil man running the country. Just like his father.
It bothers me to read about how women, and children are being murdered. If the American government has pushed, and helped the rebels get in the streets to wage a civil war, and bring such suffering on the innocent, then there is blood on our hands.
If the American government has been supporting in the shadows the Muslim Brotherhood, and this so called Arab summer,(not spring,as there is more murders when it is above 100 degrees), I believe we will be cursed as a nation. More than we have been these last few years. But, the CFR controled government does not believe in, nor fear G-d the Father, his love the word made flesh, and the Holy Spirit.
You say the outcome of this civil war will almost certainly not be good for the average Syrian. Since the rebelious Sunni population outnumbers the ruling faction on an order of about 4 to 1, the “average” Syrian is a Sunni and will almost certainly feel “good” to be rid of a brutal tyranny. Then he will go out with his fellow Sunnis and brutally purge and oppress the losers. That’s just the good old Islamic way of expressing joy in the victory one’s faith.
The most remarkable thing to me in watching news clip of “rebels”, in ordinary street clothes and carrying the ubiquitous AK rifles, is, is their hearty cheerfulness, like a bunch of deer hunters on season-opening day. For them, the prospect of being killed is not frightening. They know with absolute certainty, that they would thus become “martyrs” and go straight to a romp with virgins in Paradise. It is difficult for Westerners, who go into an orgy of candle burning, flower piling grief, when a total stranger is killed accidentally, to comprehend the Muslim mind-set on religious war. For all their claims of being a religion of Peace, it is a peace enforced by arms. The devout see themselves as Warriors for Allah, and their Quran is more of a Military Manual than a Spiritual Guide.
Those of us who live in a more humane society, under a Constitution that remains the greatest document for freedom and peaceful coexistence in history, become upset and guilt-ridden when those who follow a primitive, feudal, tribe-centered belief start killing each other. We should not do so. Theirs is an implacable theocracy. Its goal is global imperialism. It is a certainty that Islam, a backward culture suddenly enriched by oil recovery brought to them by infidels, will not only seek to destroy its benefactors but also continue, relentlessly, to kill those who fail to conform to their dogma, even if they share the same blood. We should neither appease them or embrace them.
We cannot further the cause of spreading democracy to the oppressed by taking sides in Islamic rebellion. Democracy is anathem to them. But we should openly stand by Israel, the only freedom-loving nation in their historic region.
Very eloquently put, Mr. Williamson.
Indeed, the sidelines is a good place for the US to be.