As The World Turns...Away

All the right words are there. "Undeniable" that chemical weapons were used to "indiscriminately slaughter" Syrian civilians. The world is aghast, appalled and utterly stricken by the bestial brutality, the fact that a government would take it upon itself to use all the technological military means at its disposal to slaughter its own. Western world leaders are adamant: something must be done. This must not be permitted to go on, the use of chemical weapons represent an abhorrent assault against humanity; there must be repercussions.

And all eyes swivel toward the United States of America. Whose president agrees, wholeheartedly. But yet another closed meeting of the UN Security Council concluded with inaction. The British Parliament rejected any notion that it might again become embroiled in a Middle East conflict. And Germany agreed. France alone, the original designer of the blueprint that created the Syrian geography stands resolutely beside America. It is even prepared, France asserts, to go it alone, as it did in Mali, another colonial-era responsibility.

Syria's government has gone on too long inflicting carnage, atrocities, misery, degradation and unspeakable wretchedness on its population. Killing, raping, mutilating; even children are not spared. And although few speak of it, there are hundreds of thousands of Sunni Syrians being held in detention; what of their plight and the conditions in which they are being kept? Or buried. Millions of Syrians homeless, living in tents, coping with food shortages, with environmental conditions, hopelessness, disease.

The next generation will be coping with mental health issues that will remain unsolvable by mere medical interventions. President Bashar al-Assad's 'scorched earth' response to what had initiated as a request for "peace and dignity" in April of 2011 escalated rapidly into hell on earth. The indiscriminate and deliberate bombing of bread lines outside bakeries, of schools and hospitals, missiles being fired into crowded city enclaves. Crossing the barrier into cluster bomb, thermobaric weapons use, and finally chemical weapons.

There are no more red lines to be euphorically crossed in bloodlust and the thrill of provoking the furious ire of the West. NATO is toothless, the United States impotent. The power of Russia, of Iran and the quiet assent of China along with the hoorahs! surely emanating from North Korea all represent heady stuff - Syria has friends and champions. Sudan in all likelihood has given its full and emphatic approval.

So what's 120,000 people fewer for a leader beloved of his people to rule matter after all? Thirty months in the making, bringing the country to the present, where Jordan and Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq cope as good neighbours with the spill-over of the Sunni civilians fleeing death and destruction, but the Security Council is complacent. Ban Ki-moon pleads, sends his hapless emissaries and a resolute ruler knows how he must proceed.
 

Syrian refugees walk from Syria into the Iraqi border town of Peshkhabour, on Aug. 15, 2013. The United Nations' refugee agency said Monday that over 21,000 Syrian refugees streamed into Iraq over the past few days in a sudden influx since the beginning of the two-year Syrian conflict. (Xinhua/UNHCR/Galiya Gubaeva)