SYRIA, ASSAD AND THE CURSE OF EDMUND BURKE

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." (Edmund Burke)

 

Seems this has been quoted quite a lot over the past few days.

But what are good men supposed to do, for, in Syria's case, is not every option fraught with risk and danger? So the option of doing nothing becomes the most attractive. It's justification all the easier if we listen to the shrill voices warning of the unknown consequences of trying to stop an evil man. We assume that there is less risk if we sit on our hands. We convince ourselves it is so, like a drunk dilutes a lack of resolve with a litre of vodka and finds the shame of his circumstance to be the fault of others, not himself. And like that drunk, we marinate our abdication with self-serving arguments about the risk of the future, or the errors of the past, or the arrogance of thinking we can do anything at all.

 

We have also allowed the ghosts of Iraq to crowd around, obscuring the difference between doing the right thing (confronting Burke's evil men) the wrong way and doing the plain wrong thing. It's easier then, not to risk getting it wrong, but to look out of the corner of our eyes at this problem. It's far away from our homes and we are safe. Our Government will not drop fire bombs on our schools. We are better off as spectators this time.  Yes, of course it's all awful, but its someone else's awful and why should we have to help beyond our tut-tutting in the United Nations and those other pointless feel-good talking shops so beloved of our politicians and leaders. If we look the other way for long enough, perhaps it will go away.

 

Yet, we know this wont go away, because it doesn't work like that. A fire ignored only dies once it has consumed everything it can possibly burn, and so too with "evil men". Sticking one's head in the sand is not a solution. Hoping to reason with barbarity is not a strategy. Pontificating  loudly about alternatives that have already failed may salve the conscience, but is really only a counsel of despair.

 

Last week I watched a BBC report, with an image of a fire savaged Syrian school child, fire bombed by its own Government. Naked and burning, it's gender seared away, it was only just alive, now become a breathing piece of charred human meat, open mouthed in its incomprehension at the terror of its circumstance that mere words like this cannot describe. I watched the child in HD television, whilst eating an over-heated TV dinner off a tray, listening to the voice-over giving it less than an even chance of living. What have things come to? Next up one of our politicians. So pleased he was, democracy was in action (in the UK), he said. We will not get involved in this, he said. We want proof, he said. Perhaps he had not seen the BBC report. He seemed very pleased with himself, but then they always do. I expect he went home to a large, comfortable house and a good meal.  I expect his children were already tucked up in their beds and asleep by the time he has walked up his garden path to his front door. They will not be fire bombed.

 

So, is it true that "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing"? Maybe. Perhaps however, "men" who stand by doing nothing whilst evil flourishes all about them, are not good men.

 

They are cowards. And when we let them speak in our name, so too are we.

 " Too many flames, with too much to burn, and life's only made of paper"- Ronnie James Dio