Conflict and International Reaction

A CF-18 Hornet of the 425th Tactical squadron takes off from Trapani, Italy on Tuesday, March 22, 2011. (HO, DND - Cpl. Marc-Andre Gaudreault / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

The world watches with a certain degree of disbelief at the atrocities taking place in Syria, with a regime that has the assurance of Russian support and Iranian loyalty with the immensely helpful loan of the Republic's Revolutionary Guard expertise in putting down inconvenient and bloody insurrections, complemented by the combat skill of Hezbollah.

Rumours now have arisen that other chemical attacks against civilian enclaves of Sunni Syrians have taken place.

The suffering of millions of Syrians living in wretchedly cramped refugee camps with no schooling for children and little hope for their future back in Syria must seem like Paradise to those Syrians trapped in their Syrian suburbs without access to food or medicine, slowly starving to death, due punishment for being Sunni, and not Shia citizens of Syria in a country long ruled by a Shia minority dictatorship.

And there is Ukraine, an eastern European country with many of its citizens reaching out longingly to become closer to Western Europe, but trapped by a government loyal to the traditional Russian relationship that kept the country in economic bondage, now imploding upon itself. With the help of the Kremlin, and Vladimir Putin's encouragement, Viktor Yanukovych has taken inspiration from the signal success of Bashar al-Assad in bypassing international condemnation to inflict punishment on his own.

Then there is Venezuela, again, under the tutorship of Hugo Chavez by way of his successor sworn to uphold the values of his cherished dead leader of dear memory, viewing his opposition as fascists encouraged by outside interference to disrupt the social fabric of a country dedicated to the socialist ideal. There protests have led to violence, have led to the arrest of an opposition leader, and the need to silence the voices of protests against rampant crime, corruption, food scarcity and unemployment.

And where does the international community and NATO stand in all of this? Watching. Waiting. Deploring. Proffering verbal encouragement. And sanctions, with visa restrictions and economic interruptions, but accompanied with the new realization that countries will settle their own problems because outside intervention hasn't worked and isn't seen to work.

 Iraq, again descending into violence and bloodshed, and Afghanistan where violence and bloodshed never left, and is on the cusp of increase, cases in point.

Libya, where many of those trained to successfully rebel against their tyrant have taken those lessons straight to Syria, in reflection of the U.S. and Pakistan training the mujahedeen to counter the Soviets, then morphing into al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Where abandoned weapons caches left by the fleeing Libyan military were looted, to later fuel bloody invasions and insurrections in places like Mali, the weapons still showing up in the hands of al-Qaeda affiliated militias in Syria.

"I think if you polled our population, there was an element of fatigue after Afghanistan, and shock that people felt of (seeing) soldiers returning in coffins", observed former Minister of Defence in Canada, Peter MacKay. "That was, for our generation, a very real reminder of what's at stake when you send your military into a conflict."

And British Defence Secretary Philip Hammond speaking of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan making Brits leery of engaging in other foreign wars. "Public appetite for expeditionary warfare is pretty low, based on the experience of ten years in Iraq and Afghanistan", he said, speaking of a "climate of skepticism" among Britain's war-weary public.

Not to speak of the spectre of citizens of Middle East extraction in both countries recruited to dispatch themselves as jihadists fighting abroad for Islam, whether against foreign invaders or in sectarian bloodbaths, conspiring to return to the countries which gave them haven, viewed now as the enemy, to be treated to exhibitions of their hard-won battle prowess in assaults on the home front.