This child waiting in a clinic in Kafr Batna, eastern Ghouta, will someday understand the Assadist claim that bombing her & her family & neighbors to protect the sovereignty of Assad’s dictatorship was the highest political good & not military barbarism. When she’s old enough, she can read those long-winded socialist tracts quoting Stalin, sometimes even Lenin, to justify the bombing of civilians as part of defeating capitalism. She’ll understand why they say morality is an impediment in politics. She can also read the Russian media & Assadist propaganda reports about the nefarious politics of the White Helmet rescue workers who pulled her & her family out of rubble & then she’ll be able to see the geopolitical necessity of vilifying them & defending dictatorship & the bombing of civilians. Likely if not certainly, she will reject it as the political treachery it is & be able to recognize fascist thought when she reads it. Because she just barely lived through it.
The only principled demands are for the immediate cessation of Syrian, Russian, US coalition bombing of civilians & for the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all foreign military forces from Syria.
(Photo taken February 6th by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP/Getty Images)