By Liam Britten, Senior Media Illiteracy Correspondent
Canadians breathed a sigh of relief on Thursday as the civil war in Syria came to a conclusion, or something.
Peter Hubert, father of three and a Syria watcher with over nine months of experience, declared the formerly war-torn nation “A-okay” after seeing no mention of strife in the country—or indeed any mention of Syria at all—in the news for a whole week.
“Yeah, I guess they got it all figured out over there now,” he told the Other Press in an interview at his town house and centre for international policy analysis in Coquitlam. “There’s nothing in the Province about it… I had a feeling it would clear up soon, anyway.”
Hubert said he was unsure how the war ended, what caused it to end, or where Syria exists on a map. However, despite these unanswered questions, major combat of note is well and truly possibly over.
“Those UN guys got together, solved the problem, and they got a peace prize because of it. I mean, come on, they don’t give out peace prizes to people who don’t stop wars.”
The Syrian conflict’s resolution—or whatever—joins a long list of issues that once dominated the news cycle only to disappear once they were solved—we think.
It joins global warming, homophobia in Russia, the disappearing rainforests, and First Nations poverty on the scrapheap of history’s unheard about, assumed fixed, problems.
Other experts with almost a full year of knowing the nation of Syria even existed joined Hubert in his enthusiasm about the Syrian situation’s presumed return to normalcy.
“It was really weird,” said local dental hygienist Sandy Rho of Delta. “It was like, one day, thousands killed in gas attacks and violent government crackdowns, and then, poof, it’s off the front page and it’s like it never even happened. Funny how international politics works sometimes, eh?”
Hubert echoed those sentiments.
“It seemed like the last few months you couldn’t open the paper or go on Yahoo! News without seeing something about that awful country. But now you don’t, so it’s great they figured it all out,” he said. “Now it looks like the big threats today are just the US government shutting down and whether or not [Canucks coach John] Tortorella can get the Sedins scoring again.”
