Condemning Syria

Syria: Anti-regime protest in Baba Amr, Homs

Pitiless, the blood-curdling assault
on their own, clearly establishing
once more that the grenade sometimes
does not land far from the hand that
tosses it. Inheriting the esteemed post
of grand tyrant and with it the restless
yearning of those who would be free
from oppression, history is repeated.

Education and exposure to a kinder,
gentler and free society has its
practical limits and is not guaranteed
to extinguish the vestigial urge to
dominate, destroy, pillage and slaughter
when those regime-saving methods of
tribal survival are bred in the bone.

The world observes a tableau of butchery
as an army obeys the improbable orders
of its reigning tyrant to effect a speedy
end to intolerable revolt against the divine
right of the family compact to divide
its rule and free the oppressed from
their oppressor. World bodies, heads
of state, threaten retaliation, for naught.

The regime has its defenders, few yet
powerful, creating the inevitable impasse
where those who cringe at the prospect of
ultimately setting the world alight in an
all-consuming conflagration plead for
rational debate to replace the deadly metal
clangour of war. The regime grimly agrees
to cease its onslaught upon its own, then proceeds
with its committed strategy, unrestrained.