Kenya-Syria comparison an unfair one

Re Bloodbath in Nairobi mall, Letters Sept. 28 As someone whose family hails from Nairobi and has been directly affected by the Westgate attack, including the death of a close family friend, I’m mystified by Richard Crane’s letter, in which he equates terrorist attacks in Kenya with proposed airstrikes against Syria.

First, he makes no mention that the attacks on Syria would be targeted at military installations that have been behind the deaths of more than 100,000 civilians (i.e., an army base or airstrip), whereas the terrorist attacks in Kenya were explicitly targeted against civilians who were guilty of absolutely nothing (i.e., a children’s cooking class).

Secondly, he concludes that “no one” expected anything would be achieved by attacking Bashar Assad. Deterrence theory, a bedrock of international relations theory, is based on having a credible threat to retaliate against parties pursuing undesired actions — in this case a tyrant who has broken a global taboo against the use of chemical weapons through the murder of 1,400 civilians in a Damascus suburb.

U.S.-led interventions in Bosnia (1995) and Kosovo (1999) were instrumental in saving lives against aggressors who, like Assad, listen only to the language of force. The goal in Syria, much as with Bosnia and Kosovo, would similarly be to send a strong signal that slaughtering civilians is unacceptable and that the Syrian military machine behind it will be held accountable.

Whether such strikes are the least bad option in a sea of bad options in Syria is open for debate, but what is clear is that to equate attacks against a murderous tyrant with those against children in a mall requires creativity and gall. Tariq Fancy, Toronto