The world looked on in
horror in May and June as images of the gruesome massacres in Mizrat
al-Kubir and Hula found their way out of Syria. The terrible massacre at
the village of Tremseh this weekend once again left the world in a
state of outrage. The common denominator for all three villages is that
they are all Sunni enclaves in predominately Alawite areas.
The murderous acts
carried out by the Syrian regime are bona fide ethnic cleansing. The
United Nations observers, just as they did in the previous cases, merely
listened in on the atrocities from a distance – as if they were
watching a horror film from outside the theater. They are no different
from the members of the U.N. Security Council sitting in New York.
U.S. Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton landed in Cairo on Saturday to celebrate Egypt's
democratic success (a quick reminder: the Muslim Brotherhood won the
elections). This doesn't alleviate her immense frustration at being so
powerless to affect the Syrian crisis. Since Thursday, the U.S. and the
Europeans have been trying to pass a U.N. Security Council resolution to
impose harsher sanctions against Syria, including possible military
action against the regime of President Bashar Assad. The resolution is
not being passed because Russia and China, who oppose such a resolution,
have increased their influence in the Obama era. Everyone knows that
Moscow, not Washington, holds the key to finding a solution to the
Syrian crisis.
Clinton lambasted the
Security Council, saying that "history will judge it." The same history
judges everyone – including the Obama administration's foreign policy,
which will probably be put on the back burner ahead of the November
elections.
It's not a coincidence
that the U.N. and Arab League's special envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan, is
traveling to Moscow on Monday after stops in Damascus and Tehran. Annan,
who knows that his six-point plan has failed, is now searching for help
anywhere he can find it. Tehran, in a brazen display of audacity, has
offered to mediate between the Syrian regime (its ally), and the
opposition. If we weren't talking about a horrible tragedy, we could
laugh about it.
As if to remind us of
just how complicated the situation in Syria really is, the Muslim
Brotherhood there is getting more and more involved. On Saturday, it
blamed the situation on "Assad the animal," but also blamed Annan and
Moscow and all the nations of the world for being all talk and no
action.
It wouldn't hurt if the international
community were to trade in its moral declarations for concrete measures.
In the meantime, however, as U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has
said, the Security Council's hesitancy only serves to provide the Syrian
regime with a "license to destroy." And all of this is happening, one
must concede, on Obama's watch.
No comments:
Post a Comment