Obama and Trump both lied

Barack Obama said he was going to do something about Assad's chemical weapons and he didn't.

Donald Trump said he wasn't going to do anything about Assad's chemical weapons and he did.

In this case, like the Syrian resistance, I prefer Trump's lies.

Samantha Power righteously condemns the Russians et al

When I googled "Syria genocide" the main article I found which made sense to me is written by a right wing think tank: Nothing can be done in Syria? Not true

Every night we watch the newsreader read the news, augmented by social media horrific footage, about the latest Aleppo massacres. It is just the news, which report facts, and doesn't reflect on the policies which created those facts.

Somewhere in memory I recall that the west had apparently learnt a lesson from the Rwandan genocide and at a later date intervened in Kosovo:

The most important precedent supporting the legitimacy of unilateral humanitarian intervention was established by the events that transpired in Kosovo between March and June of 1999.1 NATO’s intervention in Kosovo has confirmed the doctrine of humanitarian intervention as legal custom. The Kosovo incident also gave expression to the moral consensus in the international community that severe tyranny should not be tolerated.
- KOSOVO: A POWERFUL PRECEDENT FOR THE DOCTRINE OF HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION

I remember that the first George Bush created a no fly zone in Iraq which saved the Kurds from massacre by Saddam Hussein

President Obama could have created a no fly zone many years ago in Syria but instead he created a power vacuum. Putin saw this as weakness and moved in.

Samantha Power, the American UN Ambassador who has published a few books about genocide has righteously pilloried Russia, Iran and Assad for their Aleppo massacres:

Ms Power began her speech by saying how those left are now saying their final goodbyes as a city was “being erased from history”.

“This is what is being done by Member States of the United Nations who are sitting around this horseshoe table today,” she said.

“This is what is being done to the people of eastern Aleppo, to fathers, and mothers, and sons, and daughters, brothers, and sisters like each of us here.”

She went on to say how Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is being backed by Russia and Iran who are using militia on the ground to cut off the city and then hiding this shame from the world.

“To the Assad regime, Russia, and Iran, your forces and proxies are carrying out these crimes,” the speech continued.

“Your barrel bombs and mortars and air strikes have allowed the militia in Aleppo to encircle tens of thousands of civilians in your ever-tightening noose. It is your noose.

“It should shame you. Instead, by all appearances, it is emboldening you. You are plotting your next assault. Are you truly incapable of shame?

“Is there literally nothing that can shame you? Is there no act of barbarism against civilians, no execution of a child that gets under your skin, that just creeps you out a little bit? Is there nothing you will not lie about or justify?”

What she forgot to add is what she wrote in her book, "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide:

Power observes that American policymakers have been consistently reluctant to condemn mass atrocities as genocide or take responsibility for leading an international military intervention. She argues that without significant pressure from the American public, policymakers avoid the term "genocide" altogether. Instead, they appeal to the priority of national interests or argue (without merit, she contends) that a U.S. response would be futile and accelerate violence as a justification for inaction

Nicolas Henin: the main problem in Syria is Assad

(Video 6.5 minutes.)

Nicolas Henin (French journalist who was held hostage by Isis for 10 months).
Core issues:
(1) Assad repressed the democratic revolution.
(2) International communities response was passivity.

Chemical weapons are still being used by Assad. Assad’s barrel bombs are the current main cause of death for Syrian civilians. The Syrian regime kills 7-10 times more civilians than ISIS. Western policies are driving recruits to ISIS. Air strikes just focused on ISIS are counterproductive.

Refugees, insofar as they were welcomed to Europe was a blow for ISIS since it undermined their mythology that the West hates Muslims. Paris attack was aimed to reverse European good will to refugees. They hope that we will “close our borders, more importantly close our minds”.

Ultimately to win a war is not decided by weaponry but by whoever wins the minds of the people. Once the people can see a political solution then the Islamic State will collapse. At the end he calls for a no fly zone which excludes everyone, not very logical since there has to be someone to enforce the no fly zone, but his overall message is strong.

how syrians can return

https://act.thesyriacampaign.org/sign/we-want-to-go-home

Go to the above link to sign the petition. 

I’m writing this to you from a refugee camp in Germany. All the Syrians here are so grateful for the welcome people have given us but we want to live in Syria, not Germany.

I was 22 when the fighting started in 2011. I was living in a neighbourhood called Ghouta, a short drive from Damascus. A year after the uprising the regime of Bashar al-Assad placed Ghouta under siege - this means nothing comes in or out - no food, no medicine, nothing. A year after that the regime attacked us with chemical weapons and more than a thousand were gassed to death. For years they have also dropped barrel bombs and missiles on us from regime aircraft. Normally we got struck eight times a day. How could we continue to survive that hell on earth?

I had to cross twenty checkpoints on fake documents to make it out of Syria. Each time your heart stops as you know that there is a chance you will be arrested and taken away. I made it out and survived a death boat. I have survived so many ways a human being can be killed.

At home I was a medical student. We had so many attacks I assisted more surgeries than most surgeons do by the time they retire. My dream is to only have to perform ‘normal surgeries’, what I trained for, not picking shrapnel from bombs out of children's limbs.

We cannot go back while the war continues which is why we are asking for you to do everything you can to stop the war. All your governments agree there needs to be a political transition in Syria but no amount of words have made it happen. The Assad regime is still in power, killing seven times more civilians than Isis.

World leaders have to act to stop the bombs from the sky. We can survive sniper fire, chemicals but the barrel bombs are unbearable. A no-fly zone or creation of safe zones would save lives instantly. And I would be the first person on the plane home.

Right now everybody in Europe is talking about us refugees. But not many are listening to us. Please sign this petition to Europe’s leaders asking them to do more to stop the bombs and help us return home.

Abo Adnan

syria needs a no fly zone

Syria needs a no fly zone

Here are 5 things everyone should know about what is happening in Syria today:

1. The Assad regime is killing 7 times more civilians than ISIS.
2. More than 11,000 barrel bombs made of scrap metal and high explosive have been rolled out of regime helicopters onto hospitals, homes and schools since the UN banned them. They are the biggest killer of civilians. They drive extremism.
3. These barrel bombs are the leading cause of displacement, forcing refugees to cross the Mediterranean and other borders.
4. Many of the barrel bombs are dropped on areas under siege. More than half a million people in Syria live in areas with no access to food, water or medicine since 2013, including the areas of Ghouta that were targeted by the sarin gas attacks in the same year.
5. The international anti-Isis coalition is flying in the same airspace where many of these barrel bombs are dropped, choosing to look the other way.
6. There is no military solution to the fighting in Syria. But like in Bosnia, a no-fly zone can help protect civilians from the worst of the violence and encourage the fighting parties to come to the negotiating table.

Too many Syrians spend their days looking up at the sky, wondering when the next barrel bomb will drop and what it will hit. Today we look up in solidarity with all those who continue on, and call on all those with a conscience to join the call to #clearthesky.

Join 100+ non-violent Syrian groups in asking for the international community to enforce the UN ban on barrel bombs with a Bosnia-style no-fly zone.

a report from Turkey about Syrian refugees

From a list-serv I am on:

"We have, in Istanbul/Turkey, millions of Syrian families now, approximately 2 million, in metros, in metro stations, in streets, usually couples with 2 children in complete incapacity about what to do, how to survive. No shelter, no food, absolutely nothing.

In newspapers, it reads that Syrian girls or women are bought at 5000 turkish liras (2500 usd) as second or third wives..."

Possibly, in Australia, the mainstream media doesn't report the real news because we would die of shame for not doing more to help the wretched of the earth.

Weep for Charlie ... but also pay more attention to Syrian cartoonist, Raed Fares

I can certainly identify with the grief, anger and further preparation against home grown terrorist attacks in the "civilised" west. But I also think this needs to be compared with the so little understanding and commitment of what needs to be done in Syria. The problem of fundamentalist inspired terrorism can only be solved at its source. It's the old story of do we fish the babies out of the water or make the effort to stop those who are throwing the babies in further upstream (from The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist)

The Daesh (aka ISIS, ISIL) is the monster created within the monster of Assad's Syria.

The Syrian cartoonist, Raed Fares, survived a Daesh assassination attempt in January 2014... the would-be assassins fired at Fares 46 times. Twenty-seven bullets struck the wall behind him; 17 hit his car. Only two struck him. They shattered seven bones in his shoulder and ribs and punctured his right lung.

Assad's brutality in the face of the Arab Spring inspired Syrian revolution has created 200,000 plus deaths and 3.5 million refugees. Today we witness so much grief and preparation for terrorism at "home". By contrast there is little understanding and commitment of what needs to be done in Syria.

"Obama's Rwanda" (Raed Fares)

This NYT article about Raed Fares, Radio-Free Syria, is very good. It includes one section about Obama's failure in Syria:

“Three years ago, America could have saved thousands of lives,” Bayyoush went on. To them, what they needed seemed simple in hindsight: antiaircraft missiles, airstrikes against Assad, a no-fly zone. All of these options would have offered potential solutions. Their model for U.S. intervention was Libya, where airstrikes in support of the opposition helped to depose Qaddafi. Later the country descended into civil war. Fares acknowledged that Libya was hardly a success story, yet at least, he said, the United States had intervened to protect the Libyan people. In Syria, Assad was free to systematically imprison and kill the moderate leaders the United States was now looking for. “One by one, they were disappeared,” he said.

“Can I speak?” said Hamada, who is with the Fifth Regiment of the Free Syrian Army. “I told the Americans I met in Jordan: ‘If you help us, there will be no extremism in Syria at all. If you’re too late, there will be a time when neither you nor we will have any control.' ” According to a senior retired U.S. military leader, who asked not to be named because he is no longer in the service, the delay in backing the Free Syrian Army led to the death of moderate military leaders. “If we had helped those people earlier, it could’ve gone differently,” he said. “A lot of the good leaders are dead now. They’ve been caught between rocks and hard places and ground into dust.”

The recent strikes against ISIS in Syria frustrated the Free Syrian Army commanders on two counts. First, unlike that of the United States, the F.S.A.'s primary foe was the regime. “The regime has launched chemical attacks and many more massacres than ISIS has,” Bayyoush said. Second, they had been warning the United States against the growth of ISIS for more than a year. “A year and a half ago, ISIS started activating cells,” Hamada said. “If America had helped us in the beginning, there would be no ISIS.” But the growth of ISIS wasn’t simply America’s fault. The Free Syrian Army bore its own responsibility. “These extremist groups formed because we were weak within the Free Syrian Army,” he said

Some more Raed Fares cartoons, they are all located in one place here, Liberated Kafranbel:

red line cartoons

AFTER a 45-minute walk on Saturday (AEST), Barack Obama made a fateful decision that none of his top national security advisers saw coming: to seek congressional authorisation before taking military action in Syria
- Wall Street Journal, September 2

Obama's red line crossed (Syria)