CSotD: Will what happens in Syria stay in Syria?
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My son asked if I were going to write about the attack on Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat, who was set upon by thugs who attempted to break his hands for drawing cartoons critical of the Assad government.
I replied that the format of CSotD requires a relevant comic strip to kick off the discussion, and, while I can occasionally add a brief note about something to the bottom of a blog posting, I'd have to wait until someone did a strip worth featuring before I could get into a topic this complex.
Rick McKee has drawn what I think is, so far, the best of the Assad/Ferzat cartoons, but now I find I don't have a lot to say about the situation itself, because, frankly, I don't think Assad gives a damn what people say or think about him outside Syria.
There have been all sorts of cartoons about the pen being mightier than the sword, and you can see them at Mike Cavna's Washington Post site. It's worth a look and it's worth discussing, but the bottom line is that, while you can use cartoons to comment on a situation, there are range limits to the power of both swords and pens.
What I like about McKee's take is that he seems to understand that the flaw in Assad's plan may have been in catching the attention of the world's cartoonists. There's no chest-beating in his approach, no suggestion that the cartoonists are this mighty force that will bring the tyrant down.
But they are there, and now they've noticed you, and now there will be a greater focus on what you're doing, which may force some fence-sitting governments to tighten the screws a little.
There have already been statements about Assad and even some calls for him to step down, but they've been kind of quiet. With the world's attention, it's not that Assad will be under more pressure to do something, but that the other governments will be.
And it might also be that, with greater attention from cartoonists, when those statements are made, some news organizations will feature them more prominently, which is also part of the puzzle, given that Kim Kardashian has thus far remained silent on the topic and Assad has not yet agreed to appear on "Dancing with the Stars."
In other words, a cartoon showing Assad himself being assailed by cartoonists' sword-like pens is useless.
Ferzat Ali was drawing cartoons in Syria and had to be stopped, but somebody drawing insulting cartoons in Europe or the Americas is less than a fly buzzing around Assad's head.
Unless their cartoons arouse their own readers to put more pressure on their own governments to focus more pressure on Syria.
And if the only focus of those cartoons remains "This guy is mean to cartoonists," that isn't going to happen.
If they really want to make something happen, cartoonists will need to broaden their criticism of Assad, because he's been mean to a whole lot of other people and it's not hard to make him look like a dangerous thug who needs to be on the "To Do" list of Western governments, but it will require a little deeper plunge into Google News.
And, by the way, if you can do it in a way that doesn't insult all of Islam or all of the Middle East, it would help. I don't know how many friends he's got left in the region, but it's like intervening in a domestic dispute: It's not hard to turn a pair of combatants fighting each other into a pair of allies fighting you, simply by blundering in there as the outsider with the big mouth.
Here's another link to a Cavna article with some background on the case, and one to Daryl Cagle's site, with more cartoons on the topic.
And (with yet another hat-tip to Mike Cavna, who has really taken up this issue), here's a YouTube montage of the cartoons that so infuriated Assad. The commentary is in Arabic and the cartoons probably mean a lot more if you are in the region and better know the situation, as well as if you are in the culture and better know the nuances and metaphors.
But I think you'll see how the constant needling made the tyrant so furious.
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