An Open Letter from a Syrian Father to the French President and Foreign Minister [cc: President Obama]

Aleppo before

Aleppo after the FSA.

[This is a letter from a Syrian father who lost his 20 year old daughter in an attack by the Free Syrian Army on a city bus in Aleppo, Syria's largest city.  The letter is addressed to France's Socialist President François Hollande and his Foreign Minister (and a key player in the 1980’s tainted blood hustle that gave birth to the whole HIV/AIDS phantasmagoria) Laurent Fabius.

So far, US restraint or fecklessness (depending on one's sense of US/Russian/Chinese relations) in dealing with the counter-revolution against the Ba'ath Socialist Party of Bashar al-Assad in Syria has not had a big role in the theatrics that are the US presidential election.  The forces of chaos and outrage tweeking the country have recently contented themselves with tweezing out blame and shame for President Obama, and talking points for the fact-challenged challenger Mitt Romney, from the informational debris of the Sept 11 attacks on the rented Benghazi villa being used as a counter-revolutionary command-post by one of the chief instigators of the cold-blooded NATO aggression against the Libyan Jamahiriya, and the grotesque summary execution of its leader Col. Mommar Gaddafi, the late-American ambassador to now-Occupied Libya, Chris Stevens.  

In the second debate Romney managed a feat worthy of a much younger Chinese acrobat when he got both feet into his mouth, while keeping his head firmly and profoundly planted up his sigmoid colon, by implying that the President had not called the events in Benghazi a 'terrorist act' until a full fortnight after the President had just said he had.  It was like watching a mark roll up on a three-card Monty table and ask the guy flipping the cards what’s up; it was almost too pathetic to be true: how Romney paused, directed a pleading gaze toward President Obama, that single well-lubed wheel in the Guv's well-coiffed head whirring away, making his eyes twitch, weighing just the right way to make this kill-shot, beseeching the President to repeat what he'd just said, and his interlocutor only encouraged him to keep talking, keep on coming—finally, just too much duck sauce for the Mormon's deprived ideational palate—and he took the plunge—head-first off the high board—but the pool was empty, and even the ample Candy Crowley could not cushion the impact.

The overly proper Romney had offended the entire nation by trying to score political points of the cadavers of its fallen heroes and fucking it up.  But, even worse, he had so contaminated the subject of the US's war against Libya that the President need not worry about having to explain just why anyone but the irrational generic Arab terrorist would have reason to attack the Ambassador, his Seal team, or the Benghazi Villa/Consulate, for the rest of the campaign.

This grotesque Nixonian gaffe by the unspeakable Romney will do little or nothing to turn down the hatred for Obama and what are seen as his willful crimes against Humanity:  the drone strikes, the targeted assassinations, the suspension of Constitutional guarantees, the single-minded exsanguinations of the national economy which, unlike Bush's or Romney's attempts, are seen to be in the service of some dark, foreign conspiracy against America's much-vaunted though thoroughly delusional Liberties.  

But, hey, it's all in a day's work for the leader of History's bloodiest Fascist juggernaut.  You can't fight a war on Terror without first liquidating History, Reason and Truth, right.

So what keeps CM/P ACTIVELY supporting President Obama's reelection?  Why do we bother to send this grieving father's letter to an American father who is no stranger the grief of loss?  

In every personal expression of Barack Obama's character there is a tendency, an attitude, a longing for the humane, the truly democratic and the good. [HOLD for the mad laughter from the Left to SUBSIDE.] 

That he has to execute the foreign, military policies of the United States is dictated by his office.  But when he insinuates a tension between his executive actions and the priorities of his conscience—like his overt desire to cooperate with other, putatively hostile nations (especially Russia and China); his frequently expressed desire to see a Palestinian State along side a non-expansionist Israel existing securely within its pre-1967 borders; his very personal compassion for the victims of tragedies like the Trevon Martin killing, the horribly unjust Troy Davis execution, the various mass shootings and the plight of immigrants who come only to labor in this country; and his, however economically obtuse, notion of bringing the money spent on US wars back home to repair the nation—President Obama gives hope for the development of real Democracy in this country.  Beyond Pluralism, beyond the Electoral College, beyond Lunatic jingoism white with foam, beyond Media-rigged Elections, it is a hope for Secularism, Universal Suffrage, and Majority Rule—all principles currently being fought capped-tooth and mani-pedied nail by the pitiless forces of lawless (i.e., unregulated) global privatization—the Soulless 1% and their mendacious media lackeys.

So our translation of Mr. Zerez's open letter to the French government here below (and the French original follows) is meant to call on all citizens to wake up to and take action against the real threats posed by the Wasting Wars for Privatization that are gussied up as religious or ethnic struggles to disguise their very real corrosive effects to bring down secular, popular governments, and to promote, maintain and expand global conflict unto planetary annihilation.—mc]

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Sunday 14 October 2012

Open letter to the President of the Republic of France [François Hollande] and to his Foreign Minister [Laurent Fabius].

Dear President Hollande and Foreign Minister Fabius.

Like a great many Syrians, I find myself today the father of a victim of the war taking place in our country.  Pascale was 20 years old when, on 9 October 2012, the public bus on which she was riding was the target of an attack that took her life, murdered by an armed gang known to be a part of the “Free” Syrian Army, which you have supported, encouraged and supplied since its inception.

Some governmental rationale may have forced you to take this position in favor the “Free” Syrian Army (FSA), but you certainly cannot pretend that your policy is meant to free the Syrian people from a dictatorship.  The current Syrian regime and its political apparatus are not genteel, we have known this for some time, but the FSA “gangs” are also brutal and arbitrary.  This armed movement carries within itself the seeds of a new dictatorship that will surely make us nostalgic for the old one.

With slogans about Freedom, Democracy and Participation in Power, you and your allies have promoted the introduction onto our national territory of extremist groups, of Salafists and other elements of al Qaeda that have been killing, and forcing others in our country to kill, as they destroy whatever is in front of them.  So why have they been sent here?  Do Westerners lack the courage to confront them themselves?  If your aim is to annihilate Syria in order to protect Israel, do you really believe that reducing the our people to misery and ruin is going to bring peace and security to Israel?

Your predecessors, including the revolutionaries of 1789, always supported and protected the Christian minorities of Syria and the East.  Today you are taking positions antagonistic to this tradition, positions that will lead to the destruction of these very same minorities.  Do you think that the eradication of  these Christian communities will be a civilizing influence?

It is amazing to note how quickly French policies have made us doubt the spirit of your Revolution and its principles of  “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité”!  In Syria, your policies toward the practice of power have introduced the arbitrary; we might qualify your motto:  Liberty and Equality in Syria, oligarchy and privilege in Qatar.  As for Fraternity, it lives on in the hearts of our people, yet you have instigated a religious war by closing your eyes to the flagrant discrimination practiced in other Arab countries, especially in Saudi Arabia.

We’ve been told that Christianity is no longer popular in your country, but we don’t see the arrival of any new, more generous or more civilizing philosophy than the one that built the great cathedrals.  In a few months, you and your allies have transformed the Islamo-Christian fraternity in Syria, which is owed equally to these two religions, into a religious war.  Even though this alliance was the guarantee of a tolerant Islam that could be spread around the world.

Instead, the war we are living through, because of the FSA and its allies, has turned this symbiosis into a hostility that is spreading throughout the world with greater adaptability than understanding.  You can be sure, the troubles we are currently experiencing, you will soon be going through, too.  What do they say in the streets of Alep[1]?  “After Syria, Europe.”

Moderate Islam is very fragile because the Prophet warned Muslims that alliances with non-Muslims would pit them against other Muslims.  In allowing the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, you have further weakened moderate Islam.  You even bet against them.  Fundamentalist Islam always has the last word because the moderates are restrained and even paralyzed in their struggle against the extremists by scriptures from the Koran.

The Arab proverb says:  “He who prepares a poisoned meal is the first to die, because he must taste it.”  Isn’t there a French proverb that says:  “Ill-gotten gains never prosper.”  The US created bin Laden, and they got September 11^th.

Certainly there is a great deal that invites Syrian Christians to distance themselves from the current regime, but I can tell you that as Syrian Christians we see few reasons to destroy our country and let our children be killed to go from one corrupt system to another, one that would simply serve a different set of interests.

It would be better for us to hang on to the policies we now have than to go on to others that really don’t seem any better.  Your policies have done nothing but encourage the installation of an Islamic state in Syria with the adoption of Koranic law.  Didn’t [Egyptian] President Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, just as has been promised by some here in Syria, express his intention to impose the “Sharia” even on Egyptian Christians?  When this happens to us, thanks to you, there will be nothing you can do but hope against hope for the well being of your own women folk.

Why this open letter from a father who has been touched by the loss of someone he holds most dear?  Is it to give expression to a heart that has been afflicted with sadness, or is it, rather, because this wounded heart loudly and clearly demands what a faint and indifferent heart cannot even suggest?

Mr. President and Mr. Foreign Minister, I petition you to redirect your policies so as to create more potent and courageous actions.

Accept my invitation as a plea but don’t wait around for more such pleas.  In the name of what is left of Liberty, in the name of what we have made out of Equality, and in the name of a crumbling human Fraternity, I beseech you, along with thousands of my neighbors, to stop your support and financing of these armed gangs who declare that after they’re done with us it will be your turn.

Have pity on the unarmed injured families, the families in mourning, the families who no longer have roofs over their heads, the hundreds of thousands of young people who no longer have hope.

Have you seen Alep, the ancient city now become a ghost town?  Can you imagine Paris a ghost town, where hundreds of thousands of French families seek refuge from errant gunfire, from fanaticism, and from brutality?

Your allies here are tearing fiercely at Alep, with its marketplaces that have fed Europe for centuries; their attacks have reduced the city to ruins.  The Basilica of Saint-Siméon, surrounded by its ancient, celebrated Stylite columns, is now a ruin among ruins.  Dozens of churches, mosques, factories, schools, universities, all have been targeted by their weapons, just as the archeological treasures have been stolen and dispersed in order to bring us democracy!

We beg you, Mr. President and Mr. Foreign Minister, to accept our highest considerations.

Claude ZEREZ

Father of Pascale, died in Homs at the age of 20, on 9 October 2012.

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[1] The ancient market city of Aleppo is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, dating from the 6^th century BC.  It is the largest city in Syria. [cm/p]

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Version originale française:

dimanche 14 octobre 2012 Lettre ouverte à Monsieur le Président de la République Française et à son Ministre des Affaires Etrangères.   Merci de bien vouloir diffuser.   Monsieur le Président de la République Française, Monsieur le Ministre des Affaires Etrangères,   A l’image de nombreux syriens, je me retrouve père d’une victime de la guerre qui se déroule dans notre pays. Pascale avait vingt ans lorsque le 9 octobre dernier, le bus public qui la conduisait fut l’objet d’une attaque dans laquelle elle périt, assassinée par une bande armée reconnue comme faisant partie de l’Armée Syrienne « Libre » que vous soutenez, encouragez et alimentez depuis le début du mouvement.   Des raisons d’Etat vous poussent peut-être à prendre position en faveur de l’Armée Syrienne « Libre » (ASL) mais ne clamez surtout pas que c’est pour libérer le peuple syrien de la dictature. Le régime syrien actuel et son appareil politique n’est pas tendre, nous le savons depuis longtemps, mais les « bandes » de l’ASL associent également l’arbitraire à la brutalité ; ce mouvement porte en lui les germes d’une nouvelle dictature qui nous fera certainement regretter la précédente.   Sous des slogans généreux de liberté, de démocratie et de participation au pouvoir, vous avez, avec vos alliés, encouragé l’introduction sur notre territoire de groupes extrémistes, salafistes et autres éléments de la mouvance d’Al Qaïda qui viennent tuer et se faire tuer chez nous en détruisant ce qu’ils peuvent sur leur chemin ; pourquoi donc nous les avoir envoyés ? Les Occidentaux n’auraient-ils plus assez de courage pour les affronter eux-mêmes ? Si votre but est d’anéantir la Syrie pour protéger Israël, croyez vous vraiment que réduire le peuple syrien à la ruine et la misère va le pacifier et sécuriser Israël ?   Vos prédécesseurs, y compris les révolutionnaires de 1789 ont toujours apporté soutien et protection aux minorités chrétiennes de Syrie et d’Orient. Aujourd’hui vos prises de position ont un effet contraire et aboutissent à leur éradication. Croyez-vous en éradiquant les chrétiens apporter la civilisation ?   Qu’il est étonnant de constater comment en peu de temps, la politique française a réussi à nous faire douter du sens de sa révolution et de son emblème : « liberté, égalité, fraternité » ! En Syrie, votre politique, au sens de la pratique du pouvoir, a introduit l’arbitraire ; nous pouvons la résumer par un autre slogan : liberté et égalité en Syrie, oligarchie et privilèges au Qatar. Quant à la fraternité, elle régnait chez nous au sein du peuple et voilà que vous avez encouragé la guerre confessionnelle fermant les yeux sur les discriminations flagrantes qui se pratiquent dans d’autres pays arabes notamment en Arabie-Saoudite.   On nous dit que le Christianisme n’a plus cours dans votre pays, mais l’on ne voit guère apparaître une philosophie plus généreuse et plus cultivée que la religion qui a bâtit les cathédrales. En quelques mois, vous êtes parvenus avec vos alliés à transformer la fraternité islamo-chrétienne syrienne, que l’on doit à ces deux religions, en une guerre presque confessionnelle. Et pourtant, cette entente, est la garante d’un islam tolérant qui aurait pu se répandre dans le monde.   En échange, la guerre que nous vivons, par la volonté de l’ASL et de ses alliés semble transformer la coexistence en hostilité qui se répandra dans le monde avec une plus grande élasticité que l’entente. Soyez-en presque certains, les troubles que nous vivons actuellement, vous allez les vivre bientôt. Qu’entend-on dans les rues d‘Alep ? « Après la Syrie, l’Europe ».   L’islam modéré est très fragile car le prophète met en garde les musulmans contre une alliance avec des non-musulmans pour s’opposer à des musulmans. En laissant proliférer l’islam intégriste vous fragilisez encore plus, les musulmans modérés. Vous jouez même contre-eux. L’islam intégriste a toujours le dernier mot car les modérés sont faibles et paralysés par les versets du coran dans la lutte contre les extrémistes.   Le proverbe arabe dit : « Qui prépare un repas vénéneux est le premier à mourir car il doit le goûter »; le proverbe français ne dit-il pas "Bien mal acquis ne profite jamais" ? Les Etats-Unis ont créé Ben Laden, ils ont eu le 11 Septembre.   Certes, bien des raisons inviteraient les chrétiens syriens à se distancer de l’appareil du régime syrien actuel, mais je puis vous dire que nous, syriens chrétiens, nous ne voyons guère de raisons de détruire notre pays et de laisser tuer nos enfants pour passer d’une corruption à une autre qui serait tout simplement au service d’autres intérêts.   Mieux vaut garder la politique que nous tenons plutôt que d’en suivre une autre que nous ne pressentons guère meilleure. Votre politique n’est rien d’autre qu’un encouragement à l’installation d’un Etat confessionnel en Syrie avec adoption de la loi coranique. Le Président Mursi, membre des frères musulmans, à l’instar de ceux qui sont promis en Syrie, n’a-t-il pas exprimé son intention d’imposer la « Charia » même aux Chrétiens d’Egypte ? Lorsque nous l’aurons chez nous, grâce à vous, il n’y aura plus qu’à vous la souhaiter et la souhaiter à vos femmes.   Pourquoi cette lettre ouverte d’un père atteint dans ce qu’il a de plus cher ? Est-ce pour exprimer un cœur meurtri par le chagrin ou bien pour que cette meurtrissure clame tout haut ce qu’un cœur tiède et indifférent est incapable de suggérer ?   Monsieur le Président de la République Française, Monsieur le Ministre des Affaires Etrangères, admettez que je vous invite à une réorientation de votre politique pour en déployer une plus courageuse et plus virile.   Admettez que mon invitation soit une supplication mais ne restez pas plus longtemps des suppliés. Au nom de la liberté et de ce qu’il en reste, au nom de l’égalité et de ce qu’on en a fait et au nom de la fraternité humaine réduite en miettes, je vous supplie, avec des milliers de proches, d’arrêter de soutenir et de financer ces bandes armées qui proclament que votre tour arrive après le nôtre.   Ayez pitié de familles blessées et désarmées, des familles en deuil, des familles qui n'ont plus de toits, des jeunes par centaines de milliers qui n’ont plus d’espoir.   Avez-vous vu comment Alep, la cité ancienne est devenue une ville fantôme ? Vous êtes-vous seulement imaginé Paris, ville fantôme, où des centaines de milliers de familles françaises cherchent refuge pour éviter les tirs et les obus de l’arbitraire, du fanatisme et de la brutalité ?   Vos alliés sur place se sont acharnés sur Alep avec ses bazars qui ont alimenté l’Europe durant des siècles ; ils se sont attaqués à des ruines. La basilique Saint-Siméon entourant la colonne du célèbre stylite l’ancien, est désormais une ruine de ruines. Des dizaines d’Eglises, des Mosquées, des usines, des écoles, des universités ont été la cible de leurs tirs et que dire des trésors archéologiques qui sont volés et dispersés pour nous apporter la démocratie !   Nous vous en supplions, Monsieur le Président de la République Française, Monsieur le Ministre des Affaires Etrangères de la République Française, cessez votre soutien aux éléments armés qui n’obéissent à aucune loi et revenez à ce qui a fait la gloire de la France.   Je vous prie d’agréer, Monsieur le Président de la République Française, Monsieur le Ministre des Affaires Etrangères de la République Française, l’expression de ma très haute considération.   Claude ZEREZ Père de Pascale décédée à Homs à l'âge de 20 ans le 9 octobre 2012.