2011 seems like a long time ago. The streets and squares of cities and towns around the world were filled with people wanting a change towards a more socially just political and economic system.
Ban Ki-Moon’s second term as the Secretary General of the United Nations is ending this December. He was the most ideal man for the job as far as the United States and its allies are concerned. The unspoken, but unmistakable rule about UN Secretary Generals is that they must come across as affable enough so as not to be the cause of international controversies, but also flexible enough to accommodate the US disproportionate influence over the United Nations.
Aylan, Omran and Abdullah are dead, but it is children like them who will have to carry the burden of Syria for many years to come. The best way to honor these children is by understanding that the future of Syria’s children cannot be determined according to the whims of American and Russian politicians but the Syrian people themselves.
Division within Palestinian society has reached unprecedented levels, becoming a major hurdle on the path of any unified strategy to end Israel’s violent occupation or to rally Palestinians behind a single objective.
Seldom has an air campaign without end (almost 15 years and still expanding at the cost of untold billions of dollars) proven quite so unsuccessful. Put another way, you could perhaps conclude that, in these years, Washington has bombed and missiled a world of Islamist terror outfits into existence.
The Arab Spring was defeated neither in the byways of Tahrir Square nor in the souk of Aleppo. It was defeated roundly in the palaces of Riyadh, Doha, and Ankara as well as in Washington, Paris, Tehran, and Moscow. What began as great hope has now reached a point of great disappointment. Embers of the future remain burning—but only here and there.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019