I heard a very interesting lecture this evening on situations in the Middle East. The information was presented by a young man who has just spent a year in Jordan studying political situations in that area and working on his doctoral thesis.
I'm still processing much of what he said but two things stand out right now. First, I didn't know that over 3,000,000 Syrians are refugees living in camps in Jordan and other countries. That's 10% of the Syrian population. He said that the US is contributing a great deal of money and materials to help these refugees and had some rather scathing comments about other countries who make big promises of help and then don't come through.
Secondly, in the Q&A session, he was asked about possible reprisals if we attack Syria in some way. He said the most likely response would be to attack something of value to us in that part of the world. I must admit my very selfish first reaction to that comment was "Well, that wouldn't be as bad as an attack in the US." How very shallow of me.
I just heard on the news this evening that Syria has offered to destroy its chemical weapons in exchange for???. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, since also according to our speaker the aim of the US in Syria is regime change and has been for a long time.
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