OPINION:
An epic battle continues for control of Syria’s largest city, once a rival of Cairo and Istanbul as a center of urban culture and civilization in the Middle East. Aleppo, once the Western terminus of the Silk Road from China, is swiftly becoming the latest symbol of man’s inhumanity to man.
Fifteen physicians still working in Aleppo have written to President Obama begging him to do something to relieve a particularly dreadful humanitarian catastrophe, a destruction of human life which the United States and the civilized world promised “never again.” This is the catastrophe that the president invited with his drawing of meaningless “red lines,” only to abandon them when he addressed his rhetoric to easier things. This confused everyone but the forces of evil, who took it as the assurance that good men would do nothing.
Syrian government forces and the rebels are struggling now in the southern outskirts of Aleppo, voiding a truce promised by the Russians to permit humanitarian convoys of food and medicines to enter the city. The Russians decline to answer questions about the use of Russian warplanes against both rebels and civilians. Human Rights Watch identifies six deliberate strikes over the past two weeks by the villainous Assad regime, or their Russian ally, on hospitals and clinics. Seventeen have died.
Mr. Obama’s determination not to involve the United States in another endless Middle Eastern war is applauded by war-weary Americans, but a resolute American president could act short of war to do something. In their letter, the doctors observe that hospitals have become not accidental but deliberate targets. These doctors still in the city are dealing with a shortage of medicines and supplies, which requires triage among wounded children, choosing which child to treat and which child to abandon to a dreadful death. The government forces now stand accused of spraying chlorine gas on rebel-held residential neighborhoods.
Short of divine intervention on the Damascus road, no one expects Mr. Obama to reverse his policies, or lack of a coherent policy, in the twilight of his presidency. American retreat and withdrawal from the world is the essence of his “transformation” of U.S. foreign policy. It’s all he has for a legacy. Summoning the courage to do something beyond delivering more obscurantist rhetoric is probably expecting too much.
It’s up to Congress, hardly brimming over with courage, to take the lead in this human crisis. Sen. Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Republican majority in the Senate, and Speaker Paul Ryan and his House majority must find a way. The physicians note that the Americans once promised to set up “corridors” into the embattled areas. These would carry drugs and food to the more than 1.2 million men, women and children in the government-held zone as well as a quarter of a million more now in rebel-held neighborhoods.
Pressure must be applied to the Assad regime through Moscow and Mr. Obama’s friends in Tehran to end the brutality, including what have been described as chemical warfare attacks on the rebels by government forces with the tacit connivance of the Russians. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault says he is “concerned by reports of a new chemical attack … that is said to have claimed four lives people and left dozens injured.”
A United Nations apparatus is in place to handle humanitarian aid to civilians in both the rebel and government areas. America must take the lead now in redeeming big talk to prevent a monumental human disaster.
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