Decamping and Protesting

"For hours I heard the screams of women and three times of children, and always gunshots.  Then the voices stopped.  The silence was the most terrible thing.  We moved into the first house.  There were bodies everywhere. The mother behind the door was motionless but alive.  She had been kicked in the chest, her eyes were open and she had watched her children be slaughtered.
"We counted 14 dead.  The father's skull was crushed.  They had killed him by beating him with the butt of a gun.  He had been the first to die.  The children had all been shot."

Francois Hollande, the new French president, felt armed force might be considered, following the atrocities at Houla.  He thought it might be considered, but not without the authority of the United Nations.  That would present a trifling problem in execution.  Given the insistence of China that non-intervention was the most desirable course.  And of Russia that the regime and the opposition were equally responsible for any carnage that takes place, and Syria, after all, is only responding to the provocation of terrorists.

Still, the French government in denouncing President al-Assad's "murderous folly", ordered the Syrian ambassador to leave Paris.  And Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, Spain, Switzerland and Australia, along with the United States and Canada, ordered the Syrian diplomatic envoys in their countries to kindly leave and turn out all the embassy lights.  For their part, Belgium, Holland and Greece made do with formal protests.

"As I reminded the president, the international community will soon be reviewing the situation.  I appealed to him for bold steps now - not tomorrow, now - to create momentum for the implementation of the plan."  The "plan", of course, is as dead as an over-wintered turnip.  The regime has no intention of withdrawing its forces from major cities, nor might it release prisoners, much less consider a "Syrian-led political process" to resolve the conflict.

Kofi Annan may be crestfallen at the failure of his peace plan, but his sunny optimism obviously has no place in the Middle East.  The conflict is not entirely within Syria alone.  The proxies in a much wider conflict are all present and accounted for, and include the Arab League versus Iran, Hezbollah and the Quds forces aiding and assisting Syrian forces.  Clearly enough, a sectarian 'disagreement', between Sunni and Shia.

When push comes to shove, Iraq will align itself usefully with Iran and Syria.  Like with like.  Like it or not, that is the natural progression of the natural order of the incendiary and malign forces at play within Islam and throughout the Middle East.  And, as the farce continues to play out, President al-Assad insists he has no choice but to respond to the violence of the terrorists.

"I started trying to carry the bodies away.  We carried children who had holes in their eye sockets, who had had a gun put to their right ear and the bullet had gone straight through.  Some had cut necks, others severed limbs.  One woman had run outside to defend her husband.  They shot him in front of her.  In the panic she fled, forgetting her children.  They killed her children.  Now she is crying, crippled with guilt."

Surprise, surprise.  This is the Middle East.