Assad Ain't Awesome

So I realise a lot of you Tamarod-ers are a little new to this whole politics thing. You used to party in Sahel and then someone told your beers might be taxed heavily or even banned so you decided hit that Tahrir Square shit and check it out. It’s cool. As an alcoholic, I appreciate your struggle to defend my freedom and likely premature death.

Being new to politics, you think if after you clearly “explain” to a media outlet that if Obama invaded Canada, Americans would do the same thing as Tamarod and said media outlet still disagrees, there must be some sort of conspiracy. I mean how is it possible to not understand that Morsi opposing the Syrian regime as it slaughters its people is the same as Obama invading Canada? I’m frustrated too.

You think by screaming in the streets for 48 hours, you decisively reversed America’s machinations to control the entire Middle East through Islamist parties. You did in 48 hours what Gamal Abdel Nasser, Saddam Hussein and Hafez al-Assad (that’s Bashar’s dad, to those unfamiliar) all couldn’t do in their decades of rule. Makes sense. Really, it does… to a five year old who watched CBC with his dad once a week (Lamis is so informative).

So now countries including the country you spanked on June 30th, the evil United States of America, is considering bombing military targets in Syria to punish Bashar al-Assad for an alleged chemical weapons attack on suburbs of Damascus held by rebels. And so, in your infinite political wisdom, you have concluded that Assad is awesome and his survival is the next front in the fight you began against “terrorism” (or just a shitty president) on June 30th.

I got news people. Assad ain’t awesome. I’m sorry to burst your bubble. Obama might suck but that doesn’t mean that everyone he doesn’t like is amazing. Politics doesn’t work that way. Honestly, the first near-axiom (an axiom is an accepted truth) of politics is that nearly everyone is an asshole. The sooner you realise that, the sooner your political analysis on Facebook can mature.

Assad has been massacring his people for the past two years. There are wide reports of indiscriminate shelling of cities, towns and villages all across Syria. It’s estimated that 100,000 Syrians have died so far and millions of refugees have fled.

One thing I have to say, even though I realise it’s fucked up, is thank God for Syrian refugees in Egypt. Finally, people who know how to run a restaurant with edible food have come to Egypt. I’ve dined in Damascus and Aleppo. Cairene restaurants suck in comparison. Suddenly, shawerma the way god intended can be found all over Cairo. For the culinary sanity of the Egyptian people, we should continue to invite Syrian refugees to Egypt. Adly Mansour, our fake president, should totally tell General Sisi, our actual president, to take action on this.

Sorry, back to my point. All this terrible stuff about Assad doesn’t mean the rebels are the good guys. As I tried to explain above, the enemy of an asshole isn’t necessarily awesome. Take, for example, the Iran-Iraq war (this one was in the 80s, very vintage). You had the butcher, Saddam Hussein, fighting the fascist Khomeini. See? Both sides can suck. In political analysis, we call realising such things a “nuance”... or not being five years old.

By the way, funny thing about those rebels in Syria that you think are the “bad guys” fighting Assad your new “good guy.” They’re funded by Saudi Arabia funding your “good guy” Sisi in Egypt along with Qatar who was funding your “bad guy” Morsi. See? Saudi and Qatar can have complex alliances. So can you. This is how the real world works. Welcome.

For the record, I’m not saying I want America to bomb Assad. The US government isn’t really good at solving problems in the Middle East or Latin America, or Europe or...Detroit. I’m just saying my opposition to US policy or Obama shouldn’t translate into an embrace of Assad. Besides if they kill Bashar then Asma al-Assad is back on the market and Asma is hot! See? Lots of complexity in this debate. Think about it.