A Dark New Chapter
"Our sense of basic humanity is offended not only by this cowardly crime, but also by the cynical attempt to cover it up. All peoples and all nations who believe in the cause of our common humanity must stand up to assure that there is accountability for the use of chemical weapons, so that it never happens again."Syria is anxious to assure the world that the outrage over the chemical assault is well warranted, and it shares that outrage. Attributing the hideous event that killed a thousand innocent civilian Syrian men, their elderly, their women and children, to the evil intentions and strangely inexplicable professionalism of the rebels in launching chemical-laced bombs at the Syrian leader's people.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Washington
The strategic bombing with conventional weapons that followed hard on the chemical weapons assault undoubtedly proving that the regime was attempting to shelter people already pounded into insensibility by the previous assault, from further atrocities launched by the rebels. Experts in the field have the opinion that the second wave of bombs was meant to dissipate the effects of the first.
And almost a week later, UN chemical weapons experts were permitted to enter the bombed areas. To ascertain that chemical agents were indeed used, although other such experts have claimed that it was undeniably obvious that they had been, given the reported effects and the viewing of videos taken of victims of the attack, for symptoms such as were on display cannot be feigned.
Russia is not impressed with the certainty expressed by the U.S. administration, nor by its outrage. Too precipitate, a deliberate attempt to implicate the Syrian leadership and military when nothing could be further from reality, according to the Russian line. China taking up the repeat chorus. Russia has warned against the use of force unsanctioned by the UN Security Council. For neither Russia nor China have any intention of giving a backlash by the West official sanction.
Interference is unmerited. Each side in the Syrian conflict, after all, blames the other. Russia and China prefer to believe in the veracity and honour of a longstanding government, rather than that of a ragtag group of malcontents. And of course, take your pick; the regime or the rebels firing on the UN inspection motorcade on its way to Moadamiyeh, Damascus; that unfortunate suburb.
Russia has declared it will remain uninvolved. Should the U.S. and its allies proceed with what now looks inevitable; a punishment designed not to remove a totalitarian tyrant, but to impress upon him how displeased with his actions the West and his geographic neighbours are -- they will not react other than with condemnatory statements. Force represents "a crude violation of international law".
Of course one doesn't recall Russia's invasion of Georgia being sanctioned by the UN either.
In response, U.S. Secretary of State Kerry did his own reprimanding: "Anyone who can claim that an attack of this staggering scale can be contrived or fabricated needs to check their conscience and their own moral compass". British Prime Minister David Cameron is doing his best to help Russia readjust its moral compass, briefing Russian President Vladimir Putin with the evidence uncovered to make the regime's use of it an absolute certainty.
And will, in the final analysis, there be any possibility of Syria emerging from these horrors as a functioning state, rather than surrendering to the viral infection of Sunni, Alawite, Christian, Shia malady of violence-inspiring hatred? Will those communities ultimately end up as protected enclaves, maintained as separate and distinct principalities maintaining a distance of defence and security from one another?
Like the distinctions and separations of those Lebanese communities of Shia, Sunni, Christian and Kurds who maintain their social, political and religious separations lest each contaminate the other and their simmering hatred rise again to clash in mutual slaughter? Somewhat resembling the slow meltdown that is overtaking Iraq, for example?
And then of course, there is Iran, for which the current situation represents an experiment, a giant petri dish of various substances alien to one another, destructive of one another, coming in contact and erupting in a chemical reaction whose result cannot be predicted. If, for example, the world fails to react at the use of chemical poison as an antidote to insurrection, could that be construed as disinterest should Iran wish to proceed with a like experiment substituting nuclear for chemical?
Labels: Chemical Weapons, Conflict, Russia, Syria, United States
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, August 28, 2013
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