Mary Dejevsky: The Euro crisis will looklike a walk in the park if Syria explodes
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After Houla comes Qubair in Syria’s Hama province. Upwards of 70 people, including women and children, have been slaughtered. As with Houla, where more than 100 were killed in similarly barbaric ways, President Bashar al-Assad blames “terrorists”; his enemies blame Assad, and inexorably the pressure mounts for outside intervention. The calls come from Syrian opposition leaders, who equate their cause with that of the anti-Gaddafi forces in Libya. And they come from ordinary people and politicians, distressed by the multiplying massacres of the innocent. The urging is loud and it is impassioned. It should be resisted at all costs.
At every level the picture is deceptive. Even on the smallest, most local scale things are less black and white than they have been made to look. Take Houla. For many proponents of intervention, it will be sufficient that 108 people, including women and children, were killed in cold blood. But initial accounts spoke of young children with cut throats. Not apparently true; all, it is now said, were shot when gunmen sprayed living quarters indiscriminately.
