Stop Syria’s carnage
The players in the horrific war must get serious
The continuing slaughter in Syria, this time focusing primarily on East Ghouta outside of the capital Damascus, should sound an alarm to the world that it is far past time to stop the war there.
It is jarring to see the joyous Winter Olympics in Korea juxtaposed in media with coverage of the bombing into rubble of buildings and young children suffering and dying from bloody wounds. There are also enough major foreign countries involved in the horrid contest in Syria, its continuance being significantly dependent upon them, to make them complicit in the mayhem there, not only in East Ghouta but also in the northwest of the country.
Foreignplayers in this bloody game, more than five years in length so far, include America, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. At this point, no one is guilty or innocent in what has happened so far. But they are all guilty if they let the killingcontinue.
It is unrealistic to expect any sort of reasonable, compassionate behavior on the part of Syrian President Bashar Assad, given what he is doing now and what he has done in the past. His current actions are comprehensible if brutal: He is seeking to stamp out in Ghouta one of the last pockets of resistance to his rule in what remains of Syria. He and his Alawite minority army, supported by Russian air assets, are seeking to finish off the basically Sunni opposing Syrian forces in a Damascus suburb. That, at least, has strategic logic; what makes nosense is the civilian bloodshed.
The United States’ role in the continuing warfare in Syria is mostly in the north, where U.S.-supported Kurdish forces are facing off against ground and air forces of Turkey, a NATO ally. The policy logic of this curious state of affairs is either nonexistent or rooted in the confused Washington political situation. It runs like this: Some American military and business elements support continued U.S. adherence to the Kurds, while other U.S. elements, looking more closely at historical and long-termU.S. alliances, wish to get out of Syria, bringing our troops home, and to leave the Kurds to work out theirown destiny.
To end the slaughter in Syria will require an all-party agreement to pull together in the name of humanity. Syrian children are now paying the heaviest price for the continued contest of wills in that country. That should not be. America has enough chips on the table in the war, and enoughleverage with all of the foreign parties involved in it to step back and lead an effort to end the conflict.
Having lost most of our believability on the Israeli-Palestinian issue by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and planning to move the U.S. embassy there, the United States could be in a position to regain a modicum of credibility as an international peacemaker by making a major push to obtain a cease-fire in Syria, and to engage the foreign players in that appalling mess to push the competing Syrian parties to end the war and the bloodshed.