Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' the Tiger:
But in a sieve I'll thither sail,
And, like a rat without a tail,
I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do.
Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war;
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.
The great mastiffs of war slaver on the borders of Syria, watching their lapdogs and would-be lapdogs among the state forces and the rebels gnaw at the citizens of Syria to devastating effect.
That a proxy East-West post-Cold War conflict between ailing superpowers – The USA and Russia, with new-power China growling in the wings – has been under-way for years, in latent form, is confirmed by the horrific violence now manifest across Syria and in particular in the ancient city
of Aleppo (36 degrees North, 37 degrees East).
The threat of the use of chemical weapons by state forces against any invading army indicates that the mongrels of war inside the state will not give up the meaty bone too easily.
Such a threat should not worry US/NATO/EU/Western Power allies who are currently considering their options.
Military planners have a responsibility to prepare for intervention options in Syria for their political masters in case this conflict chooses them.
The Western Allies hold huge quantities of biological and chemical weapons. As do Russia and China. Would anyone bet against stores of them being held in battlefield-readiness, alongside other Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), somewhere inside Turkey? And other stores inside the former USSR, on the banks of the Black or Caspian Seas, perhaps near Tbilisi (41 degrees North, 44 degrees East) or Baku (40 degrees North, 49 degrees East)?
Up to the point of Assad's collapse, we are most likely to see a continuation or intensification of the under-the-radar options of financial support, arming and advising the rebels, clandestine operations and perhaps cyber warfare from the west.
So in Aleppo, the images of the acclaimed Syrian poet, Adonis, cry havoc:
They found people in bags:
a person without a head
a person without hands, or tongue
a person choked to death
and the rest had no shapes and no names.
—Are you mad? Please
don’t write about these things.
Write.
Damn dogs and rats, with and without tails. Damn the sieves that carry their armaments and their witchcraft of war.
Write.
Macbeth, Julius Caesar: Stage-plays; William Shakespeare
The Irish News: newspaper; Belfast; UK 'may enter Syria conflict'; page 23; 25.7.2012;
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/243414
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