Recently, I learned a harsh
lesson about being misquoted. With a B.A. in Communication and Political, Legal, & Economic Analysis, I’ve always been keenly aware of how the “telephone game”
sows the seeds of misunderstanding, but this instance left me feeling USED.
That feeling is appropriate to the topic: Syria. As the crisis has become
international, it has also taken a turn that is alarming to Arabs: once again
the West insists it not only has the moral superiority to judge the situation
but also the right to interfere even though the majority of the mortal cost
will be paid by Arab civilians. What used to be called imperialism, the US now
insists on calling “global policing” or being “the world’s conscience,” while
it consistently works to undermine the United Nations who are the agreed upon
agency for those things. Never mind that civil rights barely exist in the US
anymore, or all those guys still imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay who haven’t had
trials. The US doesn’t participate in the world court. They just want to be the
world court.
On September 2, 2013 one
of my godfathers e-mailed me asking for insights about the situation in Syria
for a homily he was to deliver to his Roman Catholic congregation the following
Sunday. He was particularly concerned about what he called the Christian
minorities.
Because I do not have
his permission to share a verbatim copy of his homily, I will only include his
misquotes regarding me. He made me
sound juvenile and bent on Assad’s destruction. One is wrong and the other
wrong as well as dangerous to my life and my family. He also made it sound like
some of my Syrian relatives were Christian and that there is currently a rift
between my Christian and Muslim Mahayni relatives!
After fuming for a long
time, I’ve finally decided that I must at least set the record straight
regarding what I did say to him about my feelings on the US proposing to bomb
Syrian military sites at the beginning of September. I also have to defend
myself because he posted his homily online with my name attached, so his
misquotes are there for the world to see until he or his Roman Catholic bosses
take them down.
Below are excerpts from
his homily, followed by excerpts from what I really e-mailed to him.
What he claimed I said:
She said that bombing
would “engender a certain degree of righteous general satisfaction…as long as
nobody except bad people get [taken out] and the damage is done against Assad’s
military assets, with maybe surgical strikes against one or two of his palaces
thrown in.” But it’s awfully hard to control the purposed “limited
intervention” to Assad and his supporters and assets only.”
What I actually
wrote:
The US has
no more hope of success in Syria than it had in Afghanistan or Iraq. The Syrian
people, my father among them, are cowering in their homes, now, waiting for US
bombs to kill them, not knowing where they can go for safety. No matter what
claims the US makes about accuracy, there will always be stray bombs,
"collateral damage."
And what
would any strike accomplish? The military has apparently abandoned military
targets, leaving empty buildings. And, if the US hits any of the Syrian infra-structure,
Syria will not be able to rebuild it. They aren't as oil rich as Iraq. Instead,
Syrians will freeze and starve in their homes this winter because of rationing
and not being able to safely harvest foods locally. Even if they could harvest
foods, would [the food] be edible? Ghouta is orchard country, growing peaches,
apples, plums, apricots, etc. How much of Syria's food supply is now poisoned?
Whatever the US has planned, will it really make Syrians safe, feed them,
shelter them?
What he claimed I said:
Lemia continues by
saying that if President Obama [and the US] had earlier armed the rebels while
they were still “relatively respectable secularists” and before Al Qaeda and
other Islamists murderers got so involved, there might have been some hope of
an “Assad-free” outcome. We in effect have blown that chance.
What I actually
wrote:
… The crux of things at this moment is
that while the US has promised humanitarian aid, they haven't done nearly as
much as they implied they would, and yet they have also blocked a lot of UN
efforts to define and address the situation. In this case, the UN is the only
plausible authority that could have success…
One thing
that the US could do, that they should have done from the beginning is to work
with the Assad government to ferret out terrorist cells among the rebels. It
would be easier to [evaluate] the rebels if the Al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood
type elements could be defanged or at least identified. It would also be easier
to evaluate the Syrian government's reactions if we knew how much terrorists
were involved in stirring things up. It is clear that some fundamentalist
Muslims, some of them quite extreme, are eager to oust Assad. We can only guess
what they would do if they replaced him. Otherwise, the US should stop dabbling
in post-colonial imperialism. That's how [the US is] seen in the Middle East:
imperialists.
What he claimed I said:
As far as the use of
chemical weapons on Syrian civilians, she has doubts and refers to an article
by Peter Osborne of the “Telegraph” newspaper in London (August 29).
What I actually
wrote:
While
perfectly well-meaning people want someone, anyone, to step in and end decades
of oppression, there is clearly more going on than a simple rebellion. Some
things attributed to the "Assad Regime" simply don't fit the pattern
of rationale or serve a strategy for keeping the regime in power. [For
instance], why would Assad ask the UN to come and inspect the earlier alleged
gassing sites and then launch such an obvious attack while everyone was
watching? The pattern of the [Assad] regime that has been firmly established is
to OPENLY retaliate against dissidents so that others [will] learn to keep
quiet, know exactly whom they should fear most.
What he claimed I said:
Many of her family
members are Muslim and although historically they have gotten along, lately
there has been a good deal of tension because of the rise of Militant Islam
thoughout the region.
What I actually
wrote:
Old time
Damascenes have been proud to call Christians their neighbors, but in less
educated areas, there might be problems that I haven't heard of. In Sunni
Islam, all "brothers and sisters of the book" are to be respected
(i.e. if you believe in the basic tenets of the Old Testament, [Christians] are
equal with Jews and Muslims who follow the same God). It is only the statuses
of the "Prophet Jesus" and the "Prophet Muhammad" that
separate the three religions. I hear that this has changed because Christians
are perceived to be on Assad's side, but I think that is a double-edged
propaganda tool. There are a lot of villages that have a mixed population, so
the damage of such a propaganda-generated rift might be minimized by intimacy
or doubled. It's hard to say how people react.
Note:
[This is born out by the recent rebel
attack on Maaloula. Although it was
later
found that some Muslim youth from the village participated in the
attack, Muslim neighbors did not attack the Christians in the village,
“Muslim”
extremists attacked in the name of the rebels. In fact, Muslims
in the
village are reported to have been shielding their Christian
neighbors from
rebel harassment for months.]
I
believe ALL my Syrian family members are Muslim, and none of them
approve
of extremists, so there is NO TENSION between me and my
family!
Well, I’ve learned my
lesson about trusting someone else to represent me accurately. I pray each day that Syria remains a place safe for mixed faiths and
that the Syrian people will work together to find a solution that paves a road
to a brighter future for all of us. It sounds naïve, I know, but I do pray for the
best case scenario, nothing less.
God’s Peace be with you.
Salam!!
