Why Syria needs an earthquake

The earthquake that struck Nepal killed around 6,000 people and displaced nearly half a million. It was a horrible humanitarian crisis that justifiably got the world's attention.

If only Syria could be so lucky.

The scale of this crisis dwarfs any other recent humanitarian event. Syria’s 12 million people in need of assistance is a number more than twice as large as the 5 million affected by the Indian Ocean tsunami, 3.5 million affected by the Haiti earthquake, and 1.7 million affected by Hurricane Katrina.
American responded to each of these other disasters with hundreds of millions of dollars in donations. World Vision raised $36 million in the year following the Haiti earthquake—$5.9 million of it in the first week alone! In comparison, after four years World Vision U.S. has been able to raise just $2.7 million for our response in Syria.

The Syrian civil war has gone on for four bloody years and shows absolutely no sign of ending anytime soon. Once great cities like Homs and Aleppo lie in ruins. So far the war has killed 220,000 people and sent around 4 million refugees overseas. It has become the largest humanitarian crisis since World War II.
The more than 12 million refugees is roughly equal to the total number of refugees in all of WWI.
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Even after they escape the borders of Syria they aren't safe from mass murder.
The current scale of suffering is hard to comprehend.

“One thing is clear: the situation in the region has become utterly unsustainable,” António Guterres, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, said in remarks to the Council. He called the crisis “a cancer that risks spreading and metastasizing.”

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Yet most Americans are unaware of the extent of the crisis.

A survey of more than 2,000 U.S. adults conducted online by Harris PollExternal Link on behalf of World Vision in February found that when presented with a list of prominent humanitarian crises over the past twenty years, 4 out of 5 Americans did not believe that the Syria crisis affected the most people.
To date, the conflict in Syria has impacted an estimated 12.2 million people — more than Hurricane Katrina, the earthquake in Haiti and the Indian Ocean Tsunami combined....
So far just 3 percent of World Vision’s entire Syria crisis response funding has come from private donors worldwide, making it one of the lowest response rates to a disaster.

Why is that? Why do Americans care so little about the biggest disaster in 60 years?

I can think of three reasons for this discrepancy in generosity. I call them the three M’s. The Syria crisis is Man-made, Mind-numbing, and Muslim.

There are people responsible for this crisis (ISIS, Assad, various neighboring nations), and thus people to blame. So we naturally expect the people responsible to fix it.
However, that ignores the fact that the refugees a) aren't being helped, and b) aren't responsible.

It's also a complex situation, with many different parties and no one who doesn't have blood on their hands.
But that is no excuse not to help when children are dying.

Finally, they are Muslim. This might be the real problem. It's not a secret that there is a bigotry in this country against Muslims. It's been there since Iranian students took Americans hostage in 1979.

Thus our main export to Syria in recent years, instead of being food, has been TOW anti-tank missles, many of which have wound up in the hands of jihadists.

Since August 9, 2014, we've spent $2.11 billion bombing ISIL, at $8.6 million a day. That does not include the $500 million that Congress approved to arm the Syrian rebels, nor the unknown tens of millions of dollars the CIA has spent arming rebels. A very expensive strategy that has nothing to show for it except for more dead bodies.

In comparison, since March 2011, when the Syria civil war started, we've spent $3,679,166,061 in humanitarian aid, at around $2.452 million a day.
That sounds like a lot until you put it into the context of a humanitarian disaster the size of WWI.

For all these reasons and more, the best thing that could reasonably happen to Syria at this point would be a devastating earthquake that killed thousands of innocent people, like in Nepal.
Only then would America stop blaming and start to care about the disaster in Syria. Only then would the West demand action to stop the slaughter. Only then would we show that we can show compassion to our fellow human beings, even when they are muslim.

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I'm gonna put this on the GOS tomorrow. It'll be interesting if it gets any traction at all.

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Big Al's picture

This has been a manufactured proxy war lead by the United States of Imperialism. Lest I remind you of
General Clark's seven countries in five years statement long ago where he said the U.S. was going to take down
Syria. This has been an illegal war by Obama and his henchman Kerry, prior to that Clinton. This is the same thing
they did to Libya. They and their Israel and Saudi Arabia allies. .
So I'm not sure how you can say this with a straight face.

"There are people responsible for this crisis (ISIS, Assad, various neighboring nations), and thus people to blame. So we naturally expect the people responsible to fix it."

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Big Al's picture

"The ongoing conflict in Syria has always been a proxy conflict aimed at Iran, as well as nearby Russia, and more distant China. As far back as 2007, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh warned in his 9-page New Yorker report "The Redirection Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?," that a region-wide sectarian war was being engineered by the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel - all of whom were working in concert even in 2007, to build the foundation of a sectarian militant army."

http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2015/04/us-israel-wage-war-on-iran-in-...

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So I'm not sure how you can say this with a straight face.

I've been all over the fact that the CIA has been flooding Syria with weapons since 2012.
That being said, I left out our responsibilty in this disaster for two reasons:

1) I wanted to focus on our lack of response and general lack of concern, and not getting dragged down in finger-pointing wars

2) While we've had our hands in this let's give the devil his due - we are small players in it. Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Israel have done much more to create this disaster than we have. And let's not forget Assad and the foreign fighters.
Sure, our hands are dirty with blood. But even the CIA couldn't whip up a disaster this size all by themselves.

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Big Al's picture

Not just the CIA. Mossad, MI6, the State Department, and the neocons. If you're going to point fingers at Bush
for Iraq, then it needs to be pointed at Obama for Libya, Syria, Yemen and Ukraine. Same thing.
Have you read The Redirection?
But carry on man. They'll like this on Daily Kos.

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chuckvw's picture

All of the nations mentioned have been to some degree or another influenced, abetted, armed, or intimidated (or all of the above) by USNATO. The situation as it currently stands in the ME is on us, you know, the chess masters...

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You should only listen to both sides when one side isn't totally full of shit. -Jim Jefferies

Pluto's Republic's picture

Thank you, gjohnsit.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
gulfgal98's picture

I have read in a long time. Honestly, I was unaware of the extent of this humanitarian crisis.

This needs to be posted where eyes can see it. It will be interesting to see the reaction to it.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

mimi's picture

because we are not made to feel empathy and compassion with more than our closest neighbors, family or clan.

The human mind can not handle it and I think it's a feature. If we could feel for all the people in the world who suffer, walk in their shoes, the only consequence would be that we all kill us in despair. The survival instinct is so great that we "forget" about the millions far away that suffer, because there is just no other way to survive for us. Talking about how bad those are, who "forget" and feeling good about ourselves, because we "are so much better" at least in talking truth, without being able to walk the truth, is just also not that great. We are not better than the others.

It's banal and may be awful, but true.

PS I kind of don't like your diary's title,I think it is pretty offensive and insulting to say something like that. But I do like your diary's content. Do you want to bet what will happen to the diary tomorrow on the gos?

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PS I kind of don't like your diary's title,I think it is pretty offensive and insulting to say something like that.

You are right, it is insulting. But who does it insult?
It doesn't insult the Syrians. It insults the western world by saying that we aren't capable of caring about this disaster unless it is in a specific context.
And I have no problem at all insulting the western world for this.

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mimi's picture

that's all. To whom it is insulting I haven't even thought through.

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Do you want to bet what will happen to the diary tomorrow on the gos?

I wouldn't bet on it, but I'm willing to say that it will get largely ignored. We'll find out in a few.

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gulfgal98's picture

on your diary plus tipped and recommended it.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

mimi's picture

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