Syria - Past the Point of No Return

With over 100,000 Syrians killed, resulting in at least a million refugees, the world is facing a genocide from which humanity will be unable to explain or recover. Clearly, Syria is past the point of no return - they can't undo genocide. If Al Assad's forces continue to eliminate more people through mass killings and Sarin gas attacks, his own forces will eventually turn the same weapons on others who oppose the oppressive government regime.

Yes, Senator John McCain tragically warned us about this imminent danger; and now his worst predictions have come to pass. Hundreds of dead women, children and civilians are evidence of the evil McCain warned us as imminent, if Assad continued his rampage in the Syrian civil war.  

(By the way, where's Pro-Life Queen Sarah Palin in defense of her former 2008 running mate?  There really are dead civilians to mourn in Syria; these people are not sadly hypothetical abortion victims.)

As you know, Senator McCain, it's often not easy to be right. 

Consequently, Americans like me owe Senator McCain an apology, for not paying close enough attention to the evil Syrian President Al Assad.  Clearly, the world needs to rise up against a man who  has committed crimes against humanity. In fact, Al Assad raised the bar above genocide; he did the unthinkable. Al Assad violated the Geneva Protocol by killing Syrian civilians with Sarin gas.

There was only one reason Al Assad used Sarin gas on innocent civilians -  one reason and only one:  he wanted to force President Barack Obama to retaliate and was, therefore, willing to sacrifice his own reputation in history to stand up to the US.  In so doing, Al Assad demonstrated an unrelenting ego without purpose or moral conviction.  Genocide will not resolve the Syrian Civil War.  Instead, this mass murder will bring an end to the Assad regime, but not soon enough to prevent a challenge to American world leadership.

Unfortunately, Americans have been led down the war path too many times since the end of World War II to believe another intervention will make any difference in the world.

Americans are, understandably, skeptical and war weary. 

Our nation has become something like the proverbial folk tale, about the boy who screamed wolf, just to get attention, until a real villain showed up; but, by then, nobody paid the boy any attention.  Al Assad has shown himself to be an evil personification of a wolf.  Nevertheless, Americans have been called to action too often- twice in Iraq and still in Afghanistan - to find out that the enemy leading Al Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, was really living in Pakistan.  

War weary or not, Americans must challenge a dictator who puts his own citizens to death for no reason except to, apparently, avenge a perceived threat against his leadership.  

How will Americans respond if Assad eventually uses Sarin gas on other populations, including the American military? This eventuality is, absolutely, bound to happen, unless Assad's capability to deliver deadly weapons of mass destruction, including Sarin gas, are completely destroyed.

Regardless of how ambiguous Americans public feels about retaliating on behalf of those dead Syrian civilians, the fact is, Assad crossed a red humanitarian line by killing his own people. 

In the annals of world history, Assad entered into a small circle of dictators like Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein, who also passed the point of no return by committing genocide.  

Assad used chemical weapons against his own people. As a result, his demonic leadership reputation has passed the point of no return and he will never recover from this crime against humanity.  

On behalf of the hundreds of dead Syrian children killed by Sarin gas, I want to see President Assad tried and convicted of genocide.

Humanity's Red Line in the Sand

House Speaker John Boehner asserted that Syria had crossed the “red line” staked out by Obama last year – the use of chemical weapons on its own people.

This Red Line Was Drawn by Humanity in 1925:

The Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare, usually called the Geneva Protocol, is a treaty prohibiting the first use of chemical and biological weapons. It was signed at Geneva on 17 June 1925 and entered into force on 8 February 1928.  This protocol is humanity's line in the sand for evil doers, military leaders and dictators who would use chemical warfare for the purpose of inflicting genocide as a means of terrorizing people into intimidation and submission.

President Obama launched the threat of drawing a red line in the sand as a threat against Syrian use of poison gas to subdue civilians who are sympathetic with the country's rebels currently engaged in a civil war against the government.  This line has been crossed.
Over a thousand of innocent people were gassed by Al Assad in his relentless attack on Syrian rebels.  Al Assad didn't kill militants with Sarin gas.  In fact, he murdered children.

Now, of course, the media and Congress are asking what kind of retribution the "red line" requires to enforce the threat?

Although the international buzz is all about the "red line", the reality of the situation is the line of innocent bodies lined up on floors in makeshift morgues.  These lines of small bodies are now  a bloody trough. Something must be done to punish President Al Assad for committing this extraordinary act of genocide against his own people - or any other people.  

Al Assad's assault on civilians including children didn't only defy President Obama;  his evil arrogance has put him on a short list of evil people who have been doomed as a result of using similarly terror tactics.  This short list includes Al Assad with Adolf Hitler and the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.  

As for American national security, there's no question about the impact of letting an arrogant dictator have his way with crossing the "red line"of genocide, by any means.  Recall Pol Pot (mass assassination), Adolf Hitler (Holocaust), Saddam Hussein, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong, to name a few.

Allowing Al Assad to violate the Geneva Accord and assaulting civilians also puts all military at risk during any conflicts.  

Obviously, an understandably war weary American public are horrified by the prospect of another Middle East military engagement.  But, if Al Assad gets away with genocide, because he violated the Geneva Accord, the consequences will horrify Americans even more than targeted actions needed to punish his evil deed.

Humanity drew a red line against the use of chemical weapons in 1925, and the enforcement of the Geneva Protocol must hold Al Assad accountable for his evil arrogance.

Declaring a War on Terror

American military strategies have tried, really tried, to focus the war on terror against the Al Qaeda extremists in their hide outs among tribes in developing nations, like Afghanistan and Pakistan. Yet, in spite of billions of dollars spent on this effort, while countless lives have been lost, our nation's overall efforts to protect our national security against future attacks has not advanced much. We've protected our nation against some follow up attacks, we don't know how many were foiled, but our national security still remains fragile.

In other words, we obviously have not yet won the war on terror.  

Maybe, this failure to win is because a War on Terror has never been declared. Now, the world is faced with yet another conflict in Syria that, if left unresolved, will create, either, a change of regime that could be worse than the reign of terror now being waged by President Al Assad, or a humanitarian disaster of unparalleled proportions.  

Maybe, both events will, unbelievably, happen concurrently.  In which case, our world wide undeclared war on terror will continue to be fed by the carcasses of the collapse of Syria.  

At least, that's how I see it.

Americans witnessed the horror of the September 11, 2001, attacks on our country, but a formal war was never declared.

In spite of the three terrorists attacks, led by their ring leader, the Egyptian born Mohamed Atta, on the Twin Towers at New York City's World Trade Center, coupled with the deliberate crash of United Airlines Flight 93 in Pennsylvania, and the crash of American Airlines Flight 77 on the Pentagon in Washington, DC, most Americans have yet to experience the sacrifice of living in a nation at war. 

Indeed, these brazen and evil attacks on our country caused a retribution against the terrorist networks led by Al Qaeda, leading, eventually, to the bold killing of Osama Bin Laden in Abbottobad, Pakistan. Nevertheless, there's no declared war to end the zealous networks of extremists feeding off of the unjustifiable passion for killing innocent people, especially Americans.  

Now, Americans are on the threshold of yet another Middle East conflict, this time in Syria.  Another dictator, different name, same tyranny, named Bashar Al-Assad.  This is a man whose days are numbered, regardless of how the Syrian carnage called a civil war plays out.  

Syrian President Al Assad can't possibly retain control of his country when many millions of his people are living in refugee camps outside of his nation's borders, while he sprays innocents inside his country with Sarin poison gas.

Al Assad has lost his mind. He never should've sprayed his people with Sarin poison gas, especially hundreds of innocent children.

Obviously, I'm not a foreign policy expert; moreover, I have absolutely no experience in international diplomacy.  But, this is my blog; so it's the world as I see it - "this way", according to me:

• America has never declared a War on Terror. Why?

• Meanwhile, our nation has experienced a litany of terrible attacks on our way of life, both within our own nation and, especially, abroad.  These attacks may  have started in 1993, in the Reagan administration, with the Beirut attack on the Marine barracks in Lebanon; maybe, even before then. 
• Now, because we never declared a War on Terror, America and our allies haven't been able to resolve conflicts where our nation's security are at risk.  As time goes on, our nation and allies are perceived as vulnerable, because we can't overcome the forces that want to destroy our way of life.  

Of course, Syrian President Al-Assad isn't currently threatening the US. Instead, he's fighting to retain leadership, all the while, his days are numbered, regardless of the outcome of the civil war he's obviously unable to resolve.  The leader who comes after Al-Assad- and there will be a leader after him - may be even worse, especially if the pro-government forces remove him from power because of ineptness.

If America doesn't do something definitive to help the victims of this Syrian Civil War, our credibility as a world leader will erode even more than it has already.  As a result, terrorism will spread, because it can intimidate our national resolve to fight.

In fact, I wonder if Al-Assad would have dared to use poison gas against his own people, if he perceived the threat from President Obama to "draw a line in the sand" about using weapons of mass destruction, as being serious.

Therefore, in an inverse correlation, if Al Assad prevails and his terror increases, our nation's credibility will be diminished.  As a result, the threat of world wide terrorism will expand even further, because that's how evil works.  Evil is something like carbon monoxide, it will fill the world unless civilized nations open up the environment to the expansion of oxygen.

Al Assad used Sarin gas on civilians and this evil act must be addressed; it's just inconceivable for any human being to do this.  

Al Assad now joins a demonic  historic line up, with the Germans in World War I, Adolf Hitler in World War II and Saddam Hussein in Iraq, a demonic line up.  

Frankly, the civilized world must once and for all declare a War on Terror, define it, fight it and win it.  Similar to how Allies after World War II recreated Western Europe, the world must take the same strategy against Al Qaeda and all terrorism.

By doing nothing to intervene in Syria, the terrorism networks will feed on the inaction to fuel their growing networks of groups that want to destroy civilization as we know it.  

Humanity must win the War on Terror.  There is no alternative.