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http://insufficientrespect.blogspot.com/2015/11/and-darwin-award-goes-to.html
By Michael Neumann
In Syria, day after day after day, on average about 120 people die.
Some would envy the deaths of the Parisians. A 13 year old boy is
beaten and burned until he is hardly more than a blackened lump. He is
castrated and dies. Women have rats inserted into their vaginas.
Babies have their throats slit.
The West tut-tuts, does nothing. The UN tut-tuts, does nothing. Human
rights organizations call for nice, orderly, legal measures against
Assad. They know with absolute certainty these measures won't be taken,
except perhaps years later, after many thousands more die.
The régime uses poison gas. Obama draws a red line, against the use of
poison gas. The régime uses poison gas on a larger scale.
Obama does nothing, seeks approval of Congress which he knows will
reject any action. The UK makes noises, does nothing. France makes
bigger noises, sees America will do nothing, does nothing.
These governments are ahead of the opposition, who think the West should
be nicer to Assad. Overwhelmingly, the people of Europe want nothing
done. They aren't interested in protecting the Syrian people. Some
just want to indulge themselves with charity projects for the
ever-growing number of victims.
The US gives a trickle of aid to the resistance against Assad. It won't
provide anything like enough arms to overthrow him, much less the air
support it provided in Libya. It fears that some fighter's third cousin
threatened the West. It does nothing against Hezbollah, which actually
does attack the West, but which fights for Assad.
Assad doesn't just bomb apartment buildings, schools, bread lines and
hospitals. His planes return to bomb the rescuers.
The only countries that help the rebels are Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi
Arabia. They are condemned because they're Islamist and not democratic
enough for those who condone or support Syria's dictatorship.
Betrayed by Obama, abandoned by Europe, the Syrian people see that the
secularist West is content to watch them die. They are in agony. They
grow more and more religious, as often happens when people are abandoned
by the secular powers and aided by religious ones.
The Syrian rebels find that their strongest allies are radical
Islamists. On such group, ISIS, goes crazy, starts attacking them,
insists on restoring a Caliphate to bring justice and destroy the
secular enemies.
The crazy group grows and routs the forces of the West's pet government
in Iraq. Now the West reacts. The US bombs Iraq. So do Britain and
France. The US falls in love with Kurdish groups who are bitter enemies
of Turkey, the only serious opponent of Assad on Syria's borders. It
showers the Kurds with support. The Kurds fight ISIS, the enemies of
both the rebels and Assad. The Kurds do not fight Assad. The West does
not fight Assad. The US trains Syrians on condition they don't fight
Assad. The US improves relations with Iran, which fights for Assad. It
keeps backing the Iraqi government, which supports Assad.
France intensifies its bombing of ISIS. To be clear, from a safe
distance it kills human beings who belong to ISIS. And probably a few
who don't. France still does not bomb Assad.
After hundreds of thousands of deaths, tens of thousands murdered by
torture, millions homeless, starvation, gas, barrel bombs daily, some
radical Syrian Islamists inflict on Paris, for one day, less than Syria
suffers every day. They say this is because of Syria.
The West is shocked. Hollande takes a moment out from his bombing
campaign to call it an act of war.
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