Looking for evil in the Axis.

I wouldn't be able to say it better.

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Looking for evil in the axis
By Kenneth Street

I first arrived in Syria in 1993 and now live in Aleppo, an ancient city in the North that was once a trading axis on the silk road. I have a happy and contented life here, an Australian, amongst this rich tapestry of contrasts, ethnicities and religions: Sunnis, Shias, Alawis, Druze, Maronites, Christian Arabs; orthodox, roman and protestant, Assyrians, Palestinians, Kurds, Armenians and a smattering of other minorities. They have been living side by side for centuries and now, mostly peacefully. I guess they live peacefully together, even though they would never intermarry, because social conventions have evolved here to avoid conflict if possible and to honor a person’s dignity. Their mode of communication favors consensus rather than conflict. One expression of this is the very refined sense of Arab hospitality that is famous throughout
the world. And so, even if a person’s worst enemy arrived at their door step chances are
they would feel culturally compelled to offer hospitality.

To offer a personal example: I had just come in from the desert and my nice old Peugeot was filthy dirty, so I stopped in a small village garage to have it washed. I got out and stood around waiting; looking out at a flat dry landscape bleached by a formidable sun, heat waves and dust dancing all around me. There were a bunch of tough looking truck drivers standing in a group waiting for their trucks to be washed. At the time the coalition of the misled were bombing the hell out of Baghdad; thousands of civilian casualties that make the Bali bombings and 9/11 seem like minor by comparison; collateral damage as we so conveniently call it. Arab sentiments were running high, bordering on redlining. I felt very conspicuous, a westerner, so obvious, wearing a white T-shirt and jeans, while every one around me was very Arab, clothed in a wardrobe designed 2000 year ago. Of course this is Syria, I had nothing to worry about. One of the truck drivers told a kid to go and fetch me a chair while another made me a cup of rich back Arabic coffee spiced with cardamom. “Welcome to Syria” they said all smiles and warmth. I felt humble and at the same time a little ashamed for I knew that many Australians would not welcome a
traditional looking Arab in this way.

Imagine my dismay when I found out I was living in one of the polarities of the axis of evil. I thought I better investigate - go out and find me some evil. Fornication was high on my list – damn not much of that. Maybe red-light districts, dens of iniquity, bondage parlors and seedy bars complete with lap dancers. Damn – slim pickings; a county of 20 million and maybe 3 decent bars, not seedy, mostly deserted. No, Syrians prefer to spend their time socializing, sitting around drinking coffee and in the evenings eating loads of scrumptious food while communicating with each other. Say, perhaps we could build a case for gluttony. That’s a deadly sin isn’t it? But then again obesity is a heath crisis in the Axis of good, so gluttony can’t be it.
OK what about, teenage delinquency and high suicide rates, old people shoved into retirement homes and forgotten, homeless people, masses of beggars like I found in most big American cities, mass death by gunshot – nope, again all pretty rare. I intensified my investigation; maybe there is a really sick underbelly here like home grown live child porn sites on the internet, high school mass murderers, serial rapists, serial killers, active sadists with nasty little rooms under their houses and general sickos like that – again a blank; the society here just don’t seem to tolerate people like that. I just don’t know how the media in Syria makes a living.
So maybe the evil here is more insidious and organized, like gambling extravaganza complexes that steal the shirts of people’s backs, white slavery, nasty biker gangs, extortion rackets, vicious mafias and drug lords purveying crack, smack, cocaine and other forms of misery. But again no; damn, you can’t even get a decent Joint to relax with. I guess the government here must see these sorts of actives as a threat to the well being of the people and they just say “NO”; with extreme prejudice. Some statistics to put things in perspective:

Axis of Good (US) annual body count; various causes:

Poor Nutritional habits 365,000
Alcohol 85,000
Suicide 30,622
Death by gunshot 29,000
Homicide 20,300
Illicit drugs 17,000
Marijuana 0

Which amounts to roughly 2,700,000 Americans dead by misadventure since 9/11.
And by comparison
9/11 body count 3000

So I figure Syria must be doing something really bad to gain their dubious title because they sure can’t claim per capita statistics like those above. Perhaps they manufacture and export high tech weapons systems, smart bombs, white phosphorous and cluster bombs, tanks, warplanes and the real weapons of mass destruction: millions of land mines and small arms. Maybe their big foreign money earner is death and destruction – Nope; Syrian factories prefer to make useful things like cotton fabric. They must be really mean regional bullies then and do stuff like occupy their neighbor’s lands and while doing so uproot 100,000s of olive trees for good measure; trees that represent peoples livelihoods and, ironically, also represent peace. Well that’s also definitely no, they themselves are being occupied.

Since the year 2000, 5500 people, in one of Syria’s neighboring countries, have been killed by an occupying force and 40,000 have been grievously wounded or maimed while a further 10,000 now languish under appalling conditions in prisons without trial, not to mention the 5 democratically elected government ministers who were recently kidnapped. In addition to the human casualties, over 30000 civic buildings and homes have been destroyed or badly damaged in this country. And now, more recently, another one of their neighbors have had their infrastructure bombed into the stone-age, 10s of 1000s of homes and livelihoods destroyed and in the process over 1200 people were killed, most of them civilians and way too many of them children. And there is no telling the number of people who have died inside and now know only how to hate or how many will die later of a broken heart. Inflicting this sort of suffering on another country would definitely qualify as evil, bordering on satanic – Syria? – yes, geographically close, but no. I guess even if they wanted to be this evil they know very well that the world community would just not tolerate it – not from them at least.

I was left mystified ‘cause I know it can’t be the fact that they aren’t exactly a model of democracy, well hell, the Axis of Good supported their erstwhile mate Saddam for years–
they even sold him nasty chemicals weapons and fancy equipment to kill people with. Then it hit me, I know why they are evil. It should have been so obvious from the start. There is not one McDonalds, KFC, Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Subway, Hard Rock Café or Hooters franchise in the whole place – I mean depriving a whole population of such wholesome food and tasty beverages must be evil.