Leigh Anne, you don't watch the news, how can you think you know what's going on in Syria? You live in gorgeous, peace Suquamish, Washington. You are a stay at home Mom, what do you think you can do that can make a difference? It's true I stopped watching and listening to the news years ago. I was in a dark place in my life and I couldn't expose myself to any more darkness than I already had in my life. So I carefully choose what news I expose myself to. A few months ago I read in the New York Times about families in Syria whose communities were being bombed, so they were living in ancient caves for security. Some had been there for close to a year.
I really can't imagine what a traumatic experience having my community being bombed by my own fellow countrymen and government must be like. The most shocking thing I experience are the large fireworks that go off around the Fourth of July with no warning. To have my home or the homes of my family, relatives and friends destroyed and turned into piles of rumble. The place where my kids took their first steps, learned how to ride a bike, our sanctuary and refuge from life's difficulties. That I cannot imagine.
About the same time I read an article that explained that any doctors or medical professionals that were found treating "rebels" were imprisoned, tortured and some killed. 100,000 people and children are dead. That would be 1 out of every 3 people in the city of Anchorage. And 2 million have been displaced from their homes, that's more than the entire city of Seattle. That's over 4 times the population of the state of Alaska. In a country nearly the size of Washington state.
So for me, I value highly two statements from Martin Luther King Jr.'s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in December 1964. "... nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time - the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression." And " ... peace is more precious than diamonds or silver and gold."
Also I hold as a spiritual value that women's destiny in fulfilling her potential of becoming fully equal in the world historically dominated by men, will bring about the space for the establishment of World Peace. We will no longer sit quietly as the children we bore for 9 months and raised for 18 years will be sacrificed for some out dated practice of control and domination. We have gifts God gave us to use to broker peace and discipline those who will murder their own people.
So I believe we must look past our box of weapons, bombs, soldiers, and guns and create new tools to create peace. We must at least have a plan to develop and invest in these tools. We have science and research capacity to study what actually creates peace. Obviously, we have not figured that out yet. We are still dealing with our involvement in the Middle East, in the USA's choice of arming rebels in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union, only to have to fight the same trained Afghani rebels ourselves not too many years later.
The people of Syria are hostages in a dictatorship. They arose 2 years ago during the Arab Spring protesting the dictatorship and demanding the right to elect their government. When they protested, the government hunted down rebels, killed innocent women and children connected to their communities. And destroyed whole villages and towns.
How do we support our human brothers and sisters in their demand for democracy? I think it's a worthy debate and worth our time to think about.
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