North Carolina Take On Syria

Syria is all the news.  Lot’s of folks don’t know what to do.  And I’m not saying that being from Syria allows greater clarification, but do think that hearing what Triangle residents from Syria have to say is enlightening:

Raleigh, N.C. — While the world weighs a military strike against Syria, the Syrian community in Raleigh is watching, waiting and hoping the world will step in to remove President Bashar Assad.

Khalila Sabra, who works with Syrian refugees, has seen the effects of Syria’s civil war firsthand. She calls Assad a butcher.

“He’s committing genocide, and the world is just standing by and watching it happen,” Sabra said Thursday.

Sabra and the Islamic Association of Raleigh have been gathering medical supplies and donations to send to the refugee camps on Syria’s borders. More than 2 million Syrians have fled to Lebanon and Jordan, and as many as 200,000 people have died in the civil war, she said.

“I would like to see Bashar al Assad removed by any means necessary,” she said. “I know that Americans have grown weary of war because of Afghanistan and Iraq, but our moral compass demands that we do something about Syria.”

Bilal Kanawati, who emigrated to the U.S. from Syria after high school, still has family in Damascus. He said he wasn’t surprised to hear about a chemical attack in his homeland.

“He’s done it before, and I’m sure he will do it again if we don’t stop him,” Kanawati said of Assad.

“It’s not political right now. It’s just to stop the massacres,” he said. “(Assad) is killing several hundreds everyday in Syria and the silence of the world is killing them more because nobody is acting because Syria is not an oil-producing country.”

No surprise that Assad is a butcher.  But no mention of a reasonable replacement either.

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