I have to preface this post with a confession: I'm furious right now not just because children are being slaughtered in a meaningless war, but for, I confess, a stupid reason. I had to wade through the internet to find the video above, and the misogynistic idiocy of the internet, and particularly the unhinged Samantha Power hate, is tempting me to get out a Joni Earnst hog castrator and start waving it at You Tube commenters. Violent fantasies? Against "children"? Guilty.
And of course if she were a Republican there would be screaming on Fox as to why she hasn't been given the Nobel Peace Prize yet, right after John Kerry.
But on with the post. Samantha Power, our country's Ambassador to the United Nations for just a few more weeks, brought a verbal hammer to the UN Security Council yesterday, and let Russia, Iran, and Syria have it:
To the Assad regime, Russia, and Iran -- three Member States behind the conquest of and carnage in Aleppo -- you bear responsibility for these atrocities. By rejecting UN-ICRC evacuation efforts, you are signaling to those militia who are massacring innocents to keep doing what they are doing.
Denying or obfuscating the facts, as you will do today -- saying up is down, black is white -- will not absolve you. When one day there is a full accounting of the horrors committed in this assault of Aleppo -- and that day will come, sooner or later -- you will not be able to say you did not know what was happening. You will not be able to say you were not involved. We all know what is happening. And we all know you are involved.
Aleppo will join the ranks of those events in world history that define modern evil, that stain our conscience decades later. Halabja, Rwanda, Srebrenica, and, now, Aleppo.
To the Assad regime, Russia, and Iran, your forces and proxies are carrying out these crimes. Your barrel bombs and mortars and airstrikes have allowed the militia in Aleppo to encircle tens of thousands of civilians in your ever-tightening noose. It is your noose. Three Member States of the UN contributing to a noose around civilians.
Are you truly incapable of shame? Is there literally nothing that can shame you? Is there no act of barbarism against civilians, no execution of a child that gets under your skin?
And here's where I must politicize this tragedy, because after Samantha Power gave this justifiably enraged address, the Russian ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, a Bond villain if ever there was one, rolled his eyes and played the Iraq War card. Powers should stop pretending she's Mother Theresa and remember where she comes from, the country that started this whole mess by invading Iraq based on lies.
PS This Putin sweetheart also announced that the evacuation deal his country made...I am not making this up...does not apply to civilians. Got that? Civilians are not part of any evacuation that the Russians might engage. He sat there in front of the United Nations Security Council with the blessing of Vladimir Putin and told civilians to go ahead and die.
Thanks George W. Bush. We've lost any moral high ground we might have against that guy to enforce HUMAN RIGHTS for CHILDREN in the Middle East because of you and Dick Cheney's stupid desire for nation building and oil profits.
And congratulations America, now Samantha Power will be replaced by Nikki Haley who will do the bidding of Donald Trump and Rex Tillerson. Oh. And Vladimir Putin. The end.