You’ve probably seen The Independent’s front page today, or at least Drudge’s above-the-banner treatment of it. Now read Noah Rothman’s take on how that young Syrian boy ended up dead on beach in Turkey:
It was President Barack Obama who declared the use of chemical weapons on civilians in Syria a “red line” for action, and it was President Barack Obama who flinched when it became clear that the regime in Damascus had ignored him. Soon, images began to filter into the Western press revealing the horrors wrought by these WMDs. Rooms full of bodies; people seizing, foaming at the mouth; children contorted and writhing as they met their horrible, terrifying end. The West had to act, but it did not.
Instead, jealous guardians of our comfort and privilege, Western governments opted for an off-ramp. Confronted by obstinate and recalcitrant voters both at home and in ostensibly allied states like Great Britain, Barack Obama declined to make the case for intervention in Syria. Instead, he made a case for a Trojan Horse. The Russian government had offered to preserve its client in Damascus in exchange for an unworkable plan to remove chemical weapons from Syria. Today, their client remains, but the chemical weapons were not entirely removed. Many of them are still in theater, and some have now fallen into the hands of ISIS – a terrorist enterprise of unfathomable brutality.
In reward for Obama’s pliant response to Russian overtures, Moscow responded to turmoil on its Western border by invading and annexing sovereign territory in Europe for the first time since World War II. Today, the flames of war again lap at European heels.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member