Tuesday 13 December 2016

Lamenting Aleppo

Today has a heaviness that won't lift. I can't stop thinking about the cataclysm occurring in Aleppo. Families obliterated, hospitals destroyed, people trapped in hell for years with no signs of hope.

I despair at the rise of our know-nothing isolationist set, that alternately blanks the names of these places we've helped condemn or ignorantly vows to fix it all by bombing rebel factions relentlessly. Two sides of the same bad coin.

I cringe at our bad track record of intervention, and also bemoan the lack of action that leaves people to be mown down in relentless violence. I watch the very cradle of civilization turn to bloody rubble.

I am enraged at those who turn their back on refugees, those that insist on disparaging survivors of so much trauma trying desperately to get somewhere safe with their children. There is a special kind of hell waiting for purveyors of such craven selfishness, especially when so many of us exist only because of the amnesty offered to our ancestors. That shame should burn.

I think of the aid workers, who struggle to count the bodies as they make some attempt to clear them from the streets under fire. I think of the doctors who guided surgeries from afar as local medical staff became casualties of war, their facilities decimated. No life support left.

My hands are far from the scene, unable to clear the airways of the wounded or lift debris from those trapped in the wreckage. Nevertheless, I carry those stones in my heart, that tear gas burns my eyes, and I am bleeding out.