After listening to this music and watching the video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPX5KCaqQZ8) I don’t know how anyone can be unmoved by the images you see in the video.
Women and children butchered. Thousands and thousands of families uprooted. Refugee camps overflowing in Turkey, Jordan and other neighboring countries. So many aid organizations contributing to care for these uprooted families, many of them mere remnants of whole families destroyed by the war. Millions and millions of dollars being spent to try to help them.
A Syrian man cries while holding the body of his son near Dar El Shifa hospital in Aleppo, Syria, Oct. 3, 2012. The boy was killed by the Syrian army.
And the world does nothing to stop the carnage. With all the good will, with all the nations in the UN, with all the professions of caring for the Syrians who have died, for those who are maimed, for those who have been driven from their homes and communities, the community of nations does nothing to stop the carnage.
A woman named Aida cries as she recovers from severe injuries after the Syrian army shelled her house in Idlib, northern Syria, March 10, 2012. Aida’s husband and two children were killed in the attack.
A boy named Ahmed mourns his father, Abdulaziz Abu Ahmed Khrer, who was killed by a Syrian army sniper, during his funeral in Idlib, northern Syria, March 8, 2012.
(The above photos were published in the Business Insider website on September 10 by Brian Jones. For more of these photos turn to: http://www.businessinsider.com/20-incredible-photos-syrian-war-ap-pulitzer-2013-9?op=1#ixzz2gi60SAJm )
Of course it is a good thing to take away Syria’s chemical weapons and I hope and pray that this will really happen. But what about the people? Ordinary families who have nothing to do with the political and military conflict. Why cannot we do anything for them?
Assad and members of his government and military should be tried as criminals in the ICC, as they did Milosevic from Serbia. They have committed crimes against their own civilian population, crimes against humanity. I hope some day they will be brought to justice, yet so far there seems not to exist a consensus to do just that.
The situation in Syria has degenerated into a chaos which has opened up for Al Queda the opportunity to move in and gain power and influence and surely any situation after Assad leaves power will have to take Al Queda into account. All because we stood by and did nothing, saying, after all, its a civil war and none of our business.
Russia and Iran, among others, have armed Assad and contributed materially to the war of the Assad government and military against his own civilian population. Yet the UN and NATO cannot develop a consensus to act to stop the carnage.
Why? I feel ashamed as a human being to be unable to do anything to stop this madness.
Reflections on our Times 
Do we really know what’s happening in Syria? If the majority of the Syrian people is against the government, why then is Damascus, the capital and intellectual hub of Syria, not in protest? I’ve tried to comprehend what’s happening down there, but all I know is that it’s hell. Either way, I don’t believe that removing Assad would make matters any better. If anything, it could make matters worse. Read my recent blog post for my take.
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Dear simplepolitikos,
You are confusing the moral question I try to pose in my post with quasi-political questions. Nowhere in my post do I even mention military action, though that certainly would have been an option earlier in this war. Whatever the political dynamics may have been at the beginning of the conflict, it is clear that Assad and his government and military have adopted a conscious policy of killing the civilian population they judge to be supportive of the rebel effort. This is morally unacceptable and constitute war crimes by any reasonable definition. With the involvement of Al Queda in the conflict, the question of removing Assad or not removing Assad becomes not only more complicated but infinitely more difficult to sustain given the probability that elements far worse than the Assad government might be in a position to take power, if not of the whole country of regions of it. But my point in the post has little to do directly with these questions. What I am addressing is the fact that once again the international community has failed to respond in a timely manner to genocide, to purposeful killing of civilians, as they did in Rwanda. We owe it to the Syrian people who are suffering so terribly to find some way to avoid this kind of problem in the future. Hand-wringing and self-absolution are not sufficient.
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Maybe you feel like I confused your moral question, because I personally do not see any significant evidence that the Syrian government has been purposefully killing civilians on a big scale. We don’t know what’s happening down there, all the info we get depends on the sources, and none of them are free of bias. Therefore I don’t find the case of Syria being comparable to Rwanda. There are no signs of genocide (organized killing of civilians based on ethnicity), and the rebels are armed to the degree that there’s no chance for “military victory” for either side.
With that said, I see the purpose of your post, and I like your message. I agree with your message. Rwanda and Bosnia are good examples for your case. Personally I’m a pessimist when it comes to intervention based on breach of human rights, and don’t believe that effort will be made to save civilians, unless there’s significant additional interest involved. It’s been shown time and time again.
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I don´t think that we are too far apart. I am not convinced by your contention that there is no clear evidence of the Syrian government targeting civilians. I think the chemical weapon attack that clearly was carried out by the Syrian authorities was the clearest demonstration of the tactic used by the government and its military to intimidate the civilian population. The operations of the Syrian militiamen named Shabiha even before the rebellion were infamous. But I digress from the main point, which as you have noted is the central message of my post. What good is the ICC, what good is the UN, what good are other international organizations if they are unable to intervene in clear cases of genocide and war crimes? If we don’t advance to some level of international mechanism capable of going against such crimes, then the nation-state will continue to prevail and wars will continue to break out and innocent civilians will continue to die while the good-intentioned men and women in all these international organizations pretend to be doing good.
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