So a "red line" appears only in conjunction with chemical weapons? I get it, that there is a treaty to which President Obama's illustrative ultimatum refers -- I also know how susceptible the masses are to quotable quips. To paint lines in red, like stitching scarlet letters on breasts, brings into the mix (aka "debate") a dramatic element that appears to reduce us all -- once again -- to the pre-conflict posturing of fighting cock figureheads and the resulting, testosterone-laden suiting up and profiteering that is war. When will we ever learn? Fabricated lines colored in red, like war, make for a bleak picture in any situation that involves greedy and fickle humans who are anything but linear and primary in their proclivity to tainted contest and combat. But really, if we treaty-endorsing ones were consistent with our humanitarian line-drawing, we'd have drawn a hard, fast one ages ago when technology facilitated its first near-real-time relaying of a story of some young woman being stoned to death for being raped. The list grows as the timeline goes back...Do what I say and not what I do. Is running a country like bad parenting?
If we want to put a kink into Syria's methods and means, why not consider a finesse-op of ophthalmologic surgical precision, an economic embargo that strikes at a very particular core? Revoke the kryptonite credit card (or whatever it is oligarchs carry) and hang the "Out to Lunch" signs on the boutique doors: Asma Al-Assad, no shoes for you.
UK-born and educated but having chosen instead to toss a whole lot of something aside in order to answer the wifely call of allegiance by blissful vow to nepotistically-derived power, position and dangerous alliance, is Asma an international political celeb or is she what I would call a real piece of work? Known for her love of Louboutins and documented as having recently spent thousands and thousands of whatever currency she needed at the time to further feather her bunker, and doing so all while "her" impoverished people were brought even lower to the rubble-strewn ground upon which they grovel most of their lives already, this woman is no fashion-loving sister of mine. She in her two-faced role as wifely photo-op ambassadress to the Syrian folk and highly educated, privileged kid turned Vogue-spread aspirant (in a piece her government/husband quite literally bought for her, for shame) gives the rest of us devoted gals a bad name. The name Imelda sounds rather quaint by comparison, Eva almost nostalgic.
No shoes for you. No furniture or fashions or fitness monitoring wristbands or anything that invokes westernized materialism until your people are no longer vaporized. No goodies until you step down from your Midas-touched pedestals and join us (the countries that make the crap you so love) in the 21st century. You and your hubby don't get to dabble in the things n stuff of here and now until you and yours quit dabbling in the stuff of way back then.
As Malala, a young lady who is already a woman beyond anything anyone who by virtue of materialistic willfulness (or is it manipulability?) will ever hope to be, said recently,
"Pens and books are the weapons that defeat terrorism. I truly believe the only way we can create global peace is through not only educating our minds, but our hearts and our souls...
And let us not forget that even one book, one pen, one child and one teacher can change the world."
Legacy, changing the world, is not about mass consumption or weapons of mass destruction. Legacy is how one chooses to write their story in the stars: with one pen at a time, one book at a time, not one purchase, one body at a time. I as supporter of non-violent solution and firm believer that social evolution only ever truly begins with the women in any given society will take, if asked to choose, Malala's words over any heel.