Is Syria Really that Hard?

This really annoys me. It comes from a review by poet and critic Geoff Page of Australian poet Jennifer Maiden's latest work, Brookings: the Noun:

"The most controversial poems will probably be those that refer to the White Helmets in the Syrian Civil War. In the collection's most compelling narrative, George Jeffreys: 24, Maiden's long-standing, morally compromised heroes, George and Clare, successfully rescue 'a three-year-old Druze girl whose father had died in a car accident in Mount Druitt... ' She is being held by the White Helmets who, according to George Jeffreys, 'plan... an expert video in which she (will) succumb slowly and horribly to poisoned gas'.

"To this reader, there are clearly very few 'heroes' left in the Syrian Civil War but it still seems disconcerting to blacken the White Helmets' reputation on the basis of what might merely be Russian and/or Syrian government disinformation. The truth is hard enough to establish in Syria, let alone from Penrith, where Maiden is writing. It's possible Maiden, on this issue, has just this once lost her usual sophisticated agnostic equilibrium. Maybe she knows something we don't but, if so, it's not in the text." (Poetic dissection of major moral complexities, Sydney Morning Herald, 6/4/19)

As if misrepresenting Washington's dirty war in Syria as a "Civil War," and advocating for the discredited White Helmets, were not enough, Page, a resident of Grafton, scoffs at the possibility that someone from Penrith in western Sydney might actually be better at joining the dots in the Syrian conflict than the mainstream media.