If Assad’s victims wore hoodies, then would liberals care?

By BRETT WARNKE

Alan Grayson, a lover of the camera’s gaze since President Obama’s push for a military response to Assad’s chemical attack in Syria, also made the media rounds after Traavyon Martin was gunned down.   When the seventeen-year old was shot by a self-appointed neighborhood watchman, George Zimmerman, Grayson argued that “We need to cherish our differences.”  Grayson was appalled at Zimmerman’s nonchalance when he seemed to glide into the police station after the killing as if “nothing had happened.”

                Yet, as millions have fled Syria—3/4 of them women and children—more than 100,000 people have been killed, and chemical weapons were used on a suburban population outside Damascus, Grayson’s comments have been insouciant where the victims are concerned.  He said that despite the high casualties America needed to learn the principle to “Mind your own business.”  And later said in response to the growing proxy war in Syria that he agreed with Sarah Palin’s statement that the United States should “let Allah sort it out” commenting, “I think this is one of those extraordinarily rare occasions when I think I’m in agreement with Sarah Palin.” 

                Grayson also argued that “you take the perpetrators to the International Court in the Hague.  You don’t bomb them.”  But as Slate reported on Sept. 5 Syria is not a state party to the ICC and prosecutors cannot, even if he is deposed, have proper jurisdiction over his regime’s crimes. 

                The congressman has opposed a military strike, calling it “expensive,” but has also ignored the differences between rebels by sweeping them into a “jihadist” camp that equates opposition with Assad to Islamism.  He said, “"It's clear that what we're seeing here is, first of all, civil war, and secondly a situation that's evolving into a death match... between radical, fundamentalist, hateful Shiite Muslims and radical, fundamentalist, hateful Sunni Muslims who are, in fact, historically both our enemies.”  Yet the estimates for Grayson’s claim are very different.  Opposition to Assad includes many secular, moderate, and non-Islamist forces who have been fighting against Assad since the rebellion began almost two years ago.  Secretary of State John Kerry addressed the issue saying that of the 70,000-100,000 “oppositionists” 15 percent to 20 percent were “bad guys” or extremists.    

                Grayson has called for humanitarian money for the region but did not sponsor legislation, specify how much, detail what it should be used for, or comment beyond the desire to do “something.”  As the Washington Post, the BBC, and others have extensively reported, the Assad regime is not just killing children it is targeting them.  Navi Pillay, UN Rights Commissioner has stated that Assad’s forces have gone out of their way to target the opposition’s youth,” They’ve gone for the children—for whatever purposes—in large numbers.  Hundreds detained and tortured…it’s just horrendous.”  She continued saying, “Children shot in the knees, held together with adults in really inhuman conditions, denied medical treatment for their injuries, either held as hostages or as sources of information.” 

Grayson who calls himself on his website “a Congressman with guts” has called the Syrian situation a “tragedy,” but it should be remembered what the term means.  A tragedy is not merely a sad event.  It is when a character’s strongest traits—his personal gifts to the world—hold within that person a contradiction, the flaw, that inevitably produces his destruction.  For a representative who spoke so early and passionately about the death of one child in Florida, it could also be called ‘tragic’ that he speaks with such indifference about the thousands of deaths outside his district.  It begs the question, if Assad’s victims wore hoodies, would liberals like Grayson take a second look?