We feel sympathetic, we feel empathetic, we feel despondent, we feel helpless and we feel enraged every time we hear, read or see the news about the unbearable war in Syria. We feel an urge to do something, yet we find that all the help is negligible in the face of the drastic destruction befalling the historical neighborhoods and cities across Syria. We wonder about logical reasons behind such cruelty, yet we end up with endless questions with no satisfying answers. It is widely explained and regarded as a political war for power or maybe a war on terror; but looking a bit farther, is it really so and is it the only dilemma to question and challenge?

If we wholeheartedly buy the truths offered to us by major news corporations confidently claiming that it is a war on terror and that people are asking for freedom, then shouldn’t we simply wonder about the freedom of Iraqis, Libyans, Egyptians, Tunisians, and so many others. They have been similarly promised freedom and democracy, but sadly enough they have misunderstood the meaning of both, which were falsely portrayed by the great powers of the west and the cheap leaders of the East. But we can’t ask such a silly question, we must be immersed in politics to understand such political farce as it is not for common people to be involved in such far-fetched matters. Our small minds must abide by modest survival issues such as putting food on the table to sustain this priceless circus. On the other hand, some well-informed brains assume that this is a war for political and economic power. Yet, a modest mind might as well wonder how could those carrying on such sustained wars be in need of more power while they already have absolute hegemony over the slightest details of our lives. One cannot easily disregard the fact that the vicious capitalist system consuming each and every facet of life including humans has not already distributed powers into the hands of certain individuals so full of their pitiful selves. But who are we to wonder, the only right we have is the freedom to be accomplices in this madness called politics and economics.

However, we are neither entitled nor allowed to think that far. Yet, there are other nearer issues provoking our small minds. Those privileged enough to live in war-free places and experience the fallacy of democracy and freedom must reconsider the extent to which such freedoms expand. The common sense we are thankfully endowed with tells us that we have the right to free drinking water, to healthy food and life, to authentic media and news, to a decent living space, to free and genuine education and the list goes on. But one still wonders whether such false democracy is really delivering these rights unaltered. Well the answer is found in the fast food that is sold much cheaper than the raw materials used to make it, in the vaccinations injecting hidden diseases in the children of the privileged, in the forests being systematically destroyed without the slightest regard to a natural resource equally bestowed upon us all, in the poisonous fluoride poured into the water you and your children drink, in the oil intentionally spilled in the rivers of life, in the media corporations feeding us false news and subliminal messages to keep the masses under utter control, in the education that transformed into designed oppression, in the helplessness we are made and forced to feel when bombarded with daily doses of atrocious images from around the world.

Whatever the reasons behind the war in Syria, it doesn’t make any difference at all because the winning card has already been decided before the war began, and those not at war are not at peace either unless the meaning of peace has changed and merged with that of war. The weapon is in the hands of the masses, yet they are constantly distracted away from such a weapon that could radically turn the tables into their favor. That weapon is the power and the courage to say enough, to let go of the false blessings we think we have, to sacrifice our lethal comfort zones silently steering us and the world into irreversible decay. From the smallest changes of our everyday lives, we can make drastic differences that could slowly make this system obsolete.

The war in Syria is a war on culture, a war on history, a war on natural resources, a war on hope, a war on peace, a war designed to subdue the human spirit. And the peace of the more privileged is a peace soaked in bitterness, helplessness, depression, chaos and a noise devouring the innate agency of every human being against few individuals’ deplorable agendas. We must but offer absolute honor to our precious leaders and appreciate how blessed we are to have them ruin our lives and life all together, otherwise we do not qualify for their rotten standards of loyal citizenship. Now those are few modest questions from modest observations of a very small mind and you may want to know the real answers that lie no farther than your own hands. We see, hear and say a lot, yet we do so little and that is the major flaw being used and abused against us.