Saturday, August 16, 2014

It's Always About Assad

No, Hassan Nasrallah. This isn't about ISIS, it isn't about radical takfirism. It isn't even about the global conspiracy against your precious resistance. This is about a man who kills people so that he can stay in power. You don't want us to talk about the one thing that has led us down this road, the one thing you closed your eyes to when the first protests were in the streets of Homs.

I watched you on the television set three years ago when you told us that you had asked "your people" in Homs about what was happening and they said nothing was happening. You looked surprised at the stories coming out of Syria, as if you were being told about a country like Thailand, not the country that has been the lifeline to your military machine for the past two decades. Where was ISIS back then? Where was Jabhat al Nusra in June 2011? They didn't exist. Their leaders were only just being released from the prisons of your backer and best friend. Don't ask us to forget or ignore what this is about. This isn't about the ghosts you are fighting in your head, this is about Assad. It has always been about Assad.

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