by Peter G. de Krassel
America’s alibis for not helping helpless Syrian citizens and intervening are inexcusable. Not to provide arms to the Syrian opposition because they could end up in the wrong hands and would “militarize” the conflict is utter hogwash. What would the outcome have been had France and others not come to the support of America during our revolution?
For America to stand by as Syria blocked Red Cross convoys from taking aid to devasted rebel enclaves in Homs while Syrian security forces conducted house-to-house searches and summary executions and graphic videos showed hundreds of protestors fleeing in panic at the rocket explosions which sent body parts flying is unbelievable and criminal in its own right.
“The tortured dissertations on the uniqueness of Syria’s strategic landscape are in fact proofs for why we must thwart the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah nexus. Topple the Syrian dictatorship and the access of Iran to the Mediterranean is severed, leaving the brigands of Hamas and Hezbollah scrambling for a new way. The democracies would demonstrate that regimes of plunder and cruelty, perpetrators of terror, have been cut down to size,” wrote Fouad Ajami, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
Let’s not forget it was the Assad regime that helped the jihadists in their campaign against America in Iraq. It had provided sanctuary and transit for jihadists who crossed into Iraq to do battle against the Americans and the Shiites; it even released its own Islamist prisoners and dispatched them to Iraq with the promise of pardon.
When America finally did wake up to the need to intervene in Syria, it went about it the wrong way – via the U.N. where it was obvious its resolution calling on President Bashar al-Assad to step aside would be vetoed by Russia and China and only inflame the conflict, which it did. The U.N. veto became a “license to kill” for Assad and the best reason yet the U.N. should be restructured or buried as obsolete, as I discussed in an entire chapter in Custom Maid Knowledge.
If the responsibility to protect civilians is a legitimate new part of international law, why would it apply to Libya and not to Syria? Why shouldn’t America, China and the world intervene in a one-sided Syrian slaughter of innocents seeking their freedom from a repressive murderous regime? Why should America with so much lethal power provide only “nonlethal” aid for so long?
Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) was among the founders of international law. He wrote that when a state undertakes mass killings of its own citizens, it is not only the right but also the duty of surrounding nations to intercede. Since President Bill Clinton called on NATO in 1995 to bomb Bosnia and Herzegovina, ending war crimes that are still being prosecuted, and President Obama organized a coalition for military intervention in Libya, international law has developed in line with the proposition advanced by Grotius – and Syria justified intervention from the get-go – not more than two years later.
Assad is a war criminal for his relentless and tragic crackdown and should have been referred to the International Criminal Court — and still must. Just because Russia now wants Syria peace talks because it sees Assad’s days are numbered after Israeli air strikes on weapons destined for Hezbollah — is no reason to let him escape justice.
Photo by AFP SANA | A picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency on August 9, 2012, shows Syrian government forces posing with their national flag outside the citadel in the northern city of Aleppo.