Blog Articles
Syria: An Overview and a Call to (Non-Violent) Action
I decided to dive into a current event for this month’s post on A Deeper Story: the crisis involving Syria. It’s a long post, even for me, but it’s broken down into bullet points with many quotes from news sources around the world. Please take a few minutes to educate yourself, and just as important, please pray.
Syria is all over my Facebook and Twitter feeds, with arguments raging for and against a United States military response to the alleged use of chemical weapons by Syria’s troops against civilians. I know it’s the epitome of #firstworldproblems to admit this, but I haven’t paid attention the way I should. Kids, back to school, schedules, blah blah excuse-blah. But when people started yelling about war and Iraq and WMD, I knew it was time to educate myself.
It took seconds to discover just how volatile the situation was on Saturday. I read reports that civilians, the Syrian government, and the rebels (the Free Syrian Army or FSA) all were preparing to be bombed. People were off the streets, prices of gasoline and water were climbing, and across the world, people were demonstrating both for and against military strikes. As I read through The Guardian’s live blog of Friday and Saturday’s events, my heart raced, wondering if strikes were occurring at that very moment. As the world waited for President Obama’s press conference Saturday afternoon, I read as much as I could in an effort to get a bird’s eye view.
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