How do you tell the story of the latest notice of violence in Syria, the devastating twinned car bombs in Damascus that killed at least 55 people, of Syria’s politics and the illegitimate government’s repression against its own people without admitting that one way or another the terrifying status quo–8000 people, or many more, dead– is both repugnant and attractive?
Deep division on what to do to arrest hostilities in Syria prevents our governments, now watching by the sidelines, from making a move they might regret. (Is flooding Damascus and Homs with arms for the rebels the right move? Do we give Kofi Annan’s turn at diplomacy another try?) Though the outcomes on the ground are repugnant to all the parties at hand so is getting mired in an intervention that might spread epidemiologically across the entire Middle East. No doubt, on those terms, stasis is attractive so that no party is seen getting his hands too deep and too dirty.
In the crossfire between opposing means and ends: the people of Syria
