What is it about Syria that had so seduced me? I suppose, I found in Syria something gripping - a people’s cry for their future, misery that is substantially more than what I am experiencing in my own life. They are a brave people living through experiences that are unacceptable, revolting and perpetrated by their own government.
With all that was happening in Syria, the last few weeks were spent surfing the web following the developments of the uprising and posting news on my Twitter account. No other war has ever been covered in the way that it has, from what could be gleaned from information available on the web, even as recent as the Gulf Wars. In those days, reporters working for networks were the only people who could afford expensive video recorders. After a day of taping, they would carefully edit their pieces so that images made available to the public complied with FCC rules or that of any other censorship organizations. Today, the video recorder comes with a cell phone and images could easily be downloaded to the world wide web. Whatever gets recorded during an event gets uploaded in its entirety. There’s also the social networking sites that make such things available to everyone.
My opinions about the uprising were shaped over the many months viewing amateur footage uploaded to YouTube, mostly by the participants of the events. Many of the images are too graphic to be shown on television and cable programs. They are raw, unedited and composed of extreme human tragedy. The individuals recording the events were rarely professional reporters, in most cases documenting the injury or death of someone they were close to. In a cruel twist of faith, they congregated to petition the government for a piece of their future that only personal liberty can provide to them. Before the day was over, they were recording on their devises the images of friends or loved ones for the very last time.
What it showed me, in terms that we in America rarely understand, are the potential dangers of government. The extremes to which it can bear down upon a population. The more than year-long popular uprising had unleashed on its people the power of force - trained soldiers, tanks and aircraft throwing down ordinance and destroying anything within its effective destructive range - mangling steel, turning cement into rubble, indiscriminately injuring and killing. It has turned into a lop-sided murderous rampage, there isn’t a fair court on this earth that would acquit the regime of murdering innocent civilians.
The evening before her death, Marie Colvin, a war correspondent from the Sunday Times of London, went on CNN to report on the events in Homs, one of the heaviest hit areas in Syria. She spoke about an infant in the lap of death, panting his last precious breaths of air after being struck by shrapnel. In contrast to the shaky videos on YouTube uploaded by residents, hers was a professional dispatch - articulate and succinct. Her voice had the quality that war correspondents have in spare, courage. I was drawn to what later became her last interview with Anderson Cooper, wondering how I might have missed the career of such an immense talent. Her words swirled in my head almost the entire evening:
RIP Marie Colvin, Remi Ochlick and Anthony Shadid
MARIE COLVIN’S LAST CALL - About a dying child
My opinions about the uprising were shaped over the many months viewing amateur footage uploaded to YouTube, mostly by the participants of the events. Many of the images are too graphic to be shown on television and cable programs. They are raw, unedited and composed of extreme human tragedy. The individuals recording the events were rarely professional reporters, in most cases documenting the injury or death of someone they were close to. In a cruel twist of faith, they congregated to petition the government for a piece of their future that only personal liberty can provide to them. Before the day was over, they were recording on their devises the images of friends or loved ones for the very last time.
What it showed me, in terms that we in America rarely understand, are the potential dangers of government. The extremes to which it can bear down upon a population. The more than year-long popular uprising had unleashed on its people the power of force - trained soldiers, tanks and aircraft throwing down ordinance and destroying anything within its effective destructive range - mangling steel, turning cement into rubble, indiscriminately injuring and killing. It has turned into a lop-sided murderous rampage, there isn’t a fair court on this earth that would acquit the regime of murdering innocent civilians.
The evening before her death, Marie Colvin, a war correspondent from the Sunday Times of London, went on CNN to report on the events in Homs, one of the heaviest hit areas in Syria. She spoke about an infant in the lap of death, panting his last precious breaths of air after being struck by shrapnel. In contrast to the shaky videos on YouTube uploaded by residents, hers was a professional dispatch - articulate and succinct. Her voice had the quality that war correspondents have in spare, courage. I was drawn to what later became her last interview with Anderson Cooper, wondering how I might have missed the career of such an immense talent. Her words swirled in my head almost the entire evening:
The Syrian Army is basically shelling the city of cold starving civilians. (Marie Colvin, Sunday Times of London)In my days as an indigent litigator I’ve spent many evenings cold, sometimes starving. I have experienced my government, through the actions of the FBI, take everything I have, evicted me from my home, taken my cars and forcefully remove me from the spot I chose to sleep that evening. Naturally, I commiserate with anyone who experiences hardships that are not of their own doing. I can hear you loudly, Syria.
RIP Marie Colvin, Remi Ochlick and Anthony Shadid
MARIE COLVIN’S LAST CALL - About a dying child
