A week of hellish annual remembrances in Egypt, Syria
This is a week of hellish annual remembrances. One year ago, more than 1,400 people in Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus perished after struggling mightily to breathe, writhing in excruciating pain, after being bombed with sarin gas by their own government. Days earlier, in the distant streets of Cairo, Egypt at least 1,150 demonstrators were horrifically killed by live bullets at close range, also by their own government.
Both remorseless attacks were premeditated and carried out methodically and in cold blood. The attackers were secure in the knowledge that they will escape retribution. And they were right. Both attacks will live in infamy. The chemical attack in Ghouta was the worst of its kind since the Assad regime began its systematic campaign to eliminate its domestic opponents.
The violent crackdown in Rabaa al-Adawiya was by far the bloodiest day in the modern history of Egypt. The men who ordered the attacks, Assad of Syria and Sisi of Egypt are still in power, a sickening testament to the resilient brutality of Arab autocrats and despots and the total absence of political and moral accountability in Arab societies.
What is most jarring about the two men now, is that Sisi’s metamorphosis from a coup leader to a legitimate president has been complete, with the stamp of approval from the Obama administration, and Assad finds that his savagery is being overlooked by a growing number of “realists” who roam the hallways of America’s think tanks, and among columnists and former officials who are calling for a tacit alliance with him to fight the new monstrous entity in the region the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, ISIS.
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/2014/08/23/In-Egypt-and-Syria-a-week-of-hellish-annual-remembrances-.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
