Weekly Reflection 30 September 2012

Today, while I was reading the Washington Post, I stumbled across an article about recent bombings in Syria.  Three suicide bombers detonated car bombs in the main square of Aleppo, killing 33 people, leveling buildings, and trapping survivors in the rubble.  The article goes on to say Aleppo has been free of the violence between Syrian rebels and the government until just recently. For almost two years, Syria has been in a constant state of violent conflict, and at this point, there doesn't seem to be an end to it.

After responding to this week's question, I started thinking about the legitimacy of the Syrian civil society.  Perhaps it's the violent intercourse between the people and the government that is holding Syria back from democratization.  Maybe if the protests were peaceful, Syrian civil society would gain legitimacy among its people and in the international sphere.  In my opinion, some of history's most successful movements have been the peaceful ones.  This may not be a perfect conclusion, but the coups in Egypt and Tunisia were relatively peaceful, and the democratization processes in those states are already underway.  Or even in the United States - one of the reasons the Civil Rights Movement was so successful was due to widespread peaceful protest.  When the government responded towards these nonviolent protesters with force, people everywhere were appalled.  These protesters, met with brutality for speaking out against the norm, became martyrs for civil rights.  If the Syrians stopped fighting their government with guns and used their words instead, it's possible their efforts, like the Indian Independence Movement under Ghandi, or the Civil Rights Movement under Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., could yield the desired results with fewer lives lost.