Intervention Options

Just how effective would intervention in Syria be? A limited, 'precise' strike and then withdrawal, symbolic of displeasure at the regime's carelessness with human life, its oblivious attitude to the gut reaction of disgust felt by those outside looking on, aghast at the reality of a government waging war on its helpless civilian population. A threat was given in haste whose sincerity it is difficult to judge. Just the swagger of the powerful, giving due warning to a lesser body to be aware not to overstep the bounds of permissibility?

Is the death of 1,500 by suffocating, lung-searing chemicals more horrendous in its final result than the deaths of 100,000 over a more prolonged period of time of extended military and militia savagery? The suddenness, the unexpectedness, the visuals are upsettingly off-putting, but then of course, so is the result of a bombing mission and its toll of headless bodies, of arms and legs akimbo in death, of pools of blood seeping out from piles of corpses, victims of a dreadful war against what they represent.

Of course, of course "something must be done"; the urge to intervene, to help the helpless and afflict those responsible, is automatic on seeing the visuals of human suffering. There is a moral order to uphold; if there is no reaction to brutality and carnage, no attempt to rescue the vulnerable from their dreadful fate, we must answer to our emasculated conscience which will demand of us why we did nothing. That 'we' of course, the collective.

The collective, the decent citizens of those countries who have been accustomed to responding to the visceral reaction that offends civil nature, demanding of their governments that some measure of intercession must be undertaken in the name of humanity, remains in this instance of Syria and its people, stricken with a remote grief at the fate of so many, yet adamant that they wish no additional violence, even for the purpose of rescue, to be launched on their behalf.

Fears that bombing Syria will lead to an unstoppable, wider conflagration, drawing in other countries and their own tamped-down hatreds and urges toward vengeance, seems more possible than remote; greater numbers dying, destruction on a far wider scale, and who can predict which of the antagonistic threats will in the end prevail? Upon which possibility there are no guarantees that the festering viral conflict will not depart from that geography and enter that of the West?

Should intervention pose an existential threat to those powers struggling against their opposite menace they have but to turn their attention outward, dispatch their trained teams of jihadists, primed for terror; call in their sleeping cells dispersed within Europe and North America to perform the acts they are so deathly fond of, becoming martyrs in a mass concert of vengeance and theocratic dominance.

Or, the powers of the West can take their cue from the sole country within the Middle East whose values, priorities and politics most closely reflect their own, as a non-Muslim country dedicated to democracy and justice, and quietly set about offering humanitarian aid to the hapless and the helpless of either side in this tribal, sectarian human cataclysm of death-dealing.

Carefully setting aside the aspiration to select one side of two impossibly wretched and odious oppressions, remaining uninvolved, on the sidelines, however anxiously, and taking inspiration instead from the choice left to them as decency demands; offering assistance where they can. The displaced and the brutalized mourn their dead and are desperate for aid; give that, nothing more, nothing less.