Syria? Gas? Regime Change? Where is the UN?

It is a dangerous thing when my mind wanders and, whether age or native curiosity, it has been wandering a lot lately.

Let's look at Syria, and think about the last couple weeks.  Bashar Al-Assad has been murdering large numbers of his citizens.  When he flipped over to using poison gas last week on children, it was enough to get the current president, Donald Trump, to politely remind Assad that gassing children was unacceptable during this administration, a reminder delivered by obliterating 20% or so of the Syrian air force.

Assad has been being defended by Vladimir Putin, because Putin needed someone with whom he could get naval access in the Mediterranean and a foothold in the Middle East.  Russia's defense has been provided by aiding and abetting Assad's bombing of his own people, even to the extent of claiming that the gassing of little children was done by Assad's enemies, the rebel forces, to make Assad look bad, or look even worse.

Obvious or not, we in the USA are not inclined to push Assad out of office violently, if for no other reason than the "rebels" in Syria who are fighting him are not assumed to be any bigger bargain than Assad is.  We're talking radical Islamists in there, and there's no gain in putting them in charge of an actual country.

Of course, that's only some of the opposition -- you have Iran heavily involved, who within a few years will have functioning nuclear weapons thanks to the previous president (who shall not be named, but his initials are Barack Obama).  We don't actually know what Iran wants with Syria, except that it is an opportunity to spread its own power along with the Russians.

Syria is mostly a Sunni country, and ISIS is made up of Sunnis.  Iran is Shi'ite, but they're willing to prop up Assad as well, even though he is whatever he is -- and it's not Shi'ite.

So with all that, you have a murderous dictator running things, propped up by Russia and Iran.  He is being fought by rebels who are at least partly aligned with ISIS and Al Qaeda, which makes them completely unsuitable for the USA to support, let alone allow them to be a force in a post-Assad Syrian government.

We have no real objective, save the humanitarian aim of keeping Assad from gassing his people; in fact, that's about the only thing we can do.  "Stopping Russia" is a nice, but inadequate motivation for doing anything in Syria.  If our true interest is somehow achieving a peace in Syria so its refugees can return, well, it won't happen under Assad and it certainly can't be done relying on ISISish rebels to run the country -- you think the refugees want to come back to that?

That's where my mind was wandering when I listened to some of the talking heads after President Trump bombed the air base last week.  The biggest problem is that there is no one left who is decent and reliable enough for the USA to want to have run Syria!  If Assad goes, we're talking regime change, and you have to change "to" something.

Gee, wouldn't it be nice if there were a world body of all nations that could provide a peacekeeping force to protect the citizens of a country like Syria, and provide an interim government that could be transitioned over to the Syrian people in, say, 3-5 years?

Oh, wait.  There is one.  It's called the "United Nations", assembled after WWII to try to make sure that we forestalled disasters such as those in Syria now.

Unfortunately, they appear more interested in developing a sex ring in Haiti and condemning Israel at every opportunity than in following the charter of their creation.  If ever there were a time when the UN could actually, finally, do something geo-politically that was productive, well, this would be the time and place.

Ahhhh, not a peep from the UN.  The one time they could do something productive, and they turn tails and run, run far.

You know what's worse?  Not a peep from the mainstream media about where the one organization capable of -- heck, formed for -- fixing problems like this, has gone.  They're as AWOL as the UN itself.  But those globalist types in the media will reflexively jump on the UN bandwagon next time the subject comes up.

And more kids will die from its inaction.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
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