Damascus, etc.

I make no secret of how much I love that city and even less how much I love the Damascenes that I have met there and in Paris and Geneva. This morning CNN had many shots of the old city, including the place where I bought Arabic CDs, the mosque where I put on a burka for the first and only time, the streets that I walked to outline a future book.

What bothered me is not the open support of the people interviewed for Hezbollah. That I do understand. I wonder if CNN had only chosen people who agree with Hezbollah to further “the case” against Syria.

But I do know the Israeli violence only sparks more hatred and more violence by Hezbollah which sparks more violence by Israel. No one is winning: no one can win.

Bush looks at a camera on BBC and says as if he were talking about a movie he’s seen that the Syrians want to use the war to get back into Lebanon. He says Hezbollah is the root cause of this conflict not looking for the root cause of Hezbollah. I worry that it will further demonize those that do not march to the US’s wishes.

I have no illusions about the Syrian government, but like Saddam's was it is secular and it does keep the people in balance. And if Syrians aren’t thrilled with their rulers, I can’t imagine one of them exchanging their daily lives for people in Baghdad.

I worry about the students I had from Lebanon. I worry that the war will expand to Syria. When I know people who I like, respect or love from a place, war photos are not merely the news but personal.

I sit with my ideal summer life in the South of France knowing my other rest-of-year life on Lake Geneva is equally peaceful. The “problems” I face is which restaurant to eat at, do I write or go out for tea first, what kind of olives should I buy from Joel at the marché. I do not worry about my house being bombed. I am not like the taxi driver who looked into the camera as he stood in front of the rubble that was his home a few hours before and his multi-pieced taxi. “I fed my family by driving that taxi,” he says. Now he had no place to live, no way to work.

By fate I have been dropped into a good place, but I cannot help but feel pain and worry for the other places (and people) that aren’t safe and I am angry at the Western leaders for not only not stopping it but for playing with it for their own games. This is not new in world history and this conflict is another blip in time, but when I think of souk in Damascus with its bullet holes in the ceiling from another war, I want to scream when will we ever learn?