(Part of The Darkness Visible series)
This morning Assad's death squads waited to move in for the kill. Ahead of the Shabiha came the artillery barrage. Then came the helicopters. But the siege was not enough to satisfy the beast. Assad needed to send in his "ghost" to finish off the so called rebels.
Tremseh is a small Sunni village surrounded by Alawite villages. It is obvious why Assad targeted this village. This is just more evidence that Assad's regime is exercising a genocidal philosophy to push their version of Islam onto the masses. As an Alawite himself, Assad has shown no mercy for the Sunni majority in his country. And it is becoming more blatantly obvious that he believes that the Sunnis are the reason for his imminent demise and fall from power.
The villagers of Tremseh had no way of defending themselves. They could only hide and wait for the bombs to drop. One by one they were picked off as the artillery laid siege to their humble homes. Then came the death machines from above. There was no running away. This was murder... genocide.
So where the hell was the precious UN? Is it supposed to be acceptable to those who died that we only document what happened to them? How the hell do observers stop this bloody mess? Perhaps it would have made the victims of the Nazis more comfortable if a UN observer had been at the doorway to the gas chambers? At least then the UN could pat them on the back and tell them everything is going to be alright.
Come on you bloody idiots... wake up! No amount of smurfs on the ground in Damascus is going to stop the killing unless you put guns in their hands and tanks at their backs. Let the "peace keepers" use whatever force is necessary to stop this damned mad man from repeating the same bloody sins you let happen time and time again. Did your precious observers do anything to stop Sarajevo? No! And they aren't helping here.
More than 200 hundred dead in one attack is more than 200 hundred than needed to die. But I digress...
The fact is that Syria had already begun making promises that it would stop the use of "heavy weapons" (artillery, attack helicopters, and tanks for example) in populated areas. It now has shown the UN that it has no fear of violating such agreements even as its government was setting down to discuss a peace plan with Kofi Annan. Yet the United Nations has failed to use any real measures to put an end to 17 months of brutal government oppression.
It took the UN less than a month to start putting pressure on Gaddafi and less than two weeks to use military force when it looked like Gaddafi might win. So where is France and Obama now that it has been made obvious that only minimal military intervention can topple Middle Eastern dictators?
The fact that Iran sets right next door seems to point to the reason why Obama and his spineless European companions lack the guts to fight Assad's weakened regime. It appears that the UN is far too afraid of making the "Syrian question" into a regional war. Yet in doing so it also goes to prove that Obama and his tin hat smurf friends willingly forget that Ahmadinejad isn't all that well loved in his own country either.
After all, Ahmadinejad had to use snipers to put down the last protest the outside world was able to see thanks to YouTube.
Then once again we must face the fact that Russia has been allowed to gain far to much control over UN policy even despite the fact that Russia violates human rights across the globe. Chechnya being the easiest case of this such violation. And then we have to consider the fact that it is Russia who has been selling arms all around the globe to dictators and terrorist (Assad being the latest of many).
So what needs to be done to fix the incompetence and help make us more readily capable of living up to our promise "Never Again"?
We need to cut countries such as Syria (who was recently considered for a position with the UN's Human Rights committee), China, Russia, Myanmar, Iran, and other well known violators out of the process. We can not stop genocide if we are letting those who commit it define how we combat it.
Next we need to stop believing the outdated ideal that a nation can do whatever it wants to its own people as long as it keeps it within its own borders. This was the exact reason that Cambodia was able to be taken to Hell and back while the West closed their eyes. It is not reasonable to assume that people like Assad or Pol Pott have the best interest of their citizens at heart when massacres are occurring within the nations borders.
But first, before we can get our countries to agree to these two major points, we need to get our nations to wake up. We need to get our leaders to sit up straight and start acting like men rather than mice. It is never acceptable for those in command to bow their heads to tyrants and tell us to do the same.
If we accept the weaknesses in our system... in our leaders... in ourselves... this is what happens.
The time to act is now. Do your part and help save Syria.
