In a moral blot on the legacy of President Obama, Democrats and Republicans in Washington and leaders of democratic nations throughout the world, estimates for the number of Syrians killed during the ongoing war there number as high as 470,000 according to the Syrian Center for Policy Research. Many of them were children.
In a desperate and scathing letter to Obama, the last 15 physicians remaining alive in Aleppo, the second largest city in Syria, wrote that “we have seen no effort on behalf of the United States to lift the siege or even use its influence to push the parties to protect civilians.”
{mosads}The Syrian government of Bashar Assad and the Russian military commanded by Vladimir Putin have been accused, with substantial documentation, of employing mass bombings, and possibly chemical weapons, that target civilians, including hospitals. Legal authorities and democratic leaders from around the world should now discuss whether Assad and Putin should be prosecuted for war crimes under international law.
In recent days the decent opinion of humanity was moved by the video of a shell-shocked 5-year-old Syrian boy wiping the blood from his face. That boy will fortunately survive, but he is one of the lucky ones. The carnage continues unabated and leaders throughout the democratic world have higher priorities than issuing a world-wide call to conscience and action to end this mass murder.
Before offering specific solutions, let’s be direct about who bears responsibility for this travesty.
Obama has had no credible policy toward Syria during the last seven years, nor have the Republicans who oppose him. It was jarring to watch the video of the suffering young child alongside a shot of the president enjoying a round on golf with Larry David.
While Putin commits what many reasonable people would call war crimes in Syria, GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump offers praise of Putin and proposes that the problems in Syria should be solved by Russia without American leadership. Trump promises that if is elected, he will order troops to commit torture that international and military lawyers believe would constitute war crimes, and a number of senior retired generals say they would refuse to follow his command.
Meanwhile, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has had precious little to say on the subject of saving the Syrian children. Her campaign for president appears to be supremely confident of victory and uninterested in taking a powerful position of conscience or offering “hard choices” to save the children of Syria from being mass murdered.
Congress has nothing to say on the subject, continuing its ludicrous long summer vacation while debating talking points about Clinton’s email scandal. And our European allies offer silence on the subject while their nations incoherently discuss whether they should remain in the European Union.
Meanwhile, the children continue to die in Syria, while the few remaining doctors in Aleppo plead for action and few in power show any evidence of giving a damn about stopping the carnage.
Here is what can be done:
First, Obama should contact Pope Francis and discuss convening a meeting or conference call of leaders of democratic nations to issue a moral statement of conscience to the world, and to agree to name an extraordinary special ambassador with international clout to represent them all by pushing publicly and aggressively for a cease-fire that would allow desperately needed medical and humanitarian aid to Aleppo and the whole of Syria.
Second, if Assad and Putin do not unequivocally agree to a sustainable cease-fire, the democratic nations of the world should support the filing of a formal war crimes case against them.
Third, the U.S. and its allies should create Syrian refugee safe zones, as proposed by retired Gen. David Petraeus, to establish a place where large numbers of Syrians could safely gather and benefit from a huge international airlift — similar to the Berlin airlift of the 1940s — of food, medicine and other humanitarian aid.
This safe zone should be protected by a no-fly zone. Assad and Putin should be told that hostile aircraft that violate this safe zone will be shot down. Faced with this choice, they will almost certainly agree. If not, the safe zone should be enforced.
The failure of Obama and European leaders to establish a safe zone has been a catastrophic mistake that has allowed ghoulish and escalating carnage to be inflicted on Syrians and caused a flood of refugees that has destabilized Europe and increased the danger of terrorism everywhere.
I applaud the war correspondents on various television networks who have taken the case of the children of Syria to the airwaves of the nation and world. I applaud, salute and pray for the few remaining doctors in Aleppo who have issued their call to action. They should never be forced to decide which newborn babies must be abandoned to die because of insufficient action from a “free world” that has lacked the political will and moral clarity to act to end the carnage.
There are things we can do. In the name of decency, and in our own self-interest, we should do them.
Let’s save the children of Syria, who will live or die if we uphold, or abandon, the values we claim to stand for.
Budowsky was an aide to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Texas) and Rep. Bill Alexander (D-Ark.), then chief deputy majority whip of the House. He holds an LL.M. in international financial law from the London School of Economics. He can be read on The Hill’s Contributors blog and reached at brentbbi@webtv.net.