Where is the outrage? This recent use of the known Syrian stockpiles of sarin/mustard (or whatever) gas is just the last straw. It demands, at long last, some kind of international reaction to syrian crimes against humanity.
Remember the Wars of Yugoslavian Dissolution? In the 1990's, after interminal agonizing and hand wringing, the USA bombed Serbian army to smithereens. That eventually resulted in regime change and alone enabled the eventual arrest and prosecution of Slobodan Miloševic. Bosnia and Kosova are today far from perfect. But the flood of refugees was interrupted before it de-stabilized surrounding states. No American boots were on the ground and no American blood was lost.
Now Syria: 80,033 have been killed to keep this killer & and his family in power. The 2 million refugees that the U.N. now documents, which includes more than 1 million children, is placing a huge strain on the countries hosting them. At the end of August, some 716,000 Syrian refugees were registered or in the process of being registered in Lebanon, 515,000 in Jordan, 460,000 in Turkey, 168,000 in Iraq and 110,000 in Egypt. This is ethnic cleansing at its worse.
General Wesley Clark, who led the NATO campaign against Serbia forces in Kosova also has Obama's back:
But President Obama has rightly drawn a line at the use of chemical weapons. Some weapons are simply too inhuman to be used. And, as many of us learned during 1990s, in the words of President Clinton, "Where we can make a difference, we must act."Interestingly, General Clark also points out:
As in the case of Syria today, there was no United Nations resolution explicitly authorizing NATO to bomb Serbia. But NATO nations found other ways, including an earlier U.N. Security Council Resolutionpage 105, to legally justify what had to be done. In Syria, the violation of the 1925 Geneva prohibition against the use of chemical weapons is probably sufficient justification. (The fact that Russia used chemical weapons in Afghanistan in the 1980s should be used to undercut Russian objections to strikes against Syria today.)I opposed the war in Vietnam, and the invasion of Iraq. In the streets. But I am in favor of killing or ousting this hereditary dictator in Damascus by any means short of putting American boots on the ground. Drones, missiles, bombs. He's propped up by the Russians, Iranians, and Hezbollah. Bashar al-Assad is, at the moment, the world's bloodiest terrorist. Some people just need killing. If he can be disappeared, the Syrians can sort Al-Qaeda out w/o our assistance.
