Pity the poor Syrians.
It’s a bad time to be a victim, with economies chaotic, government budgets strained and global compassion in short supply. On top of all that, Syria’s ruling Assad family surely ranks among the most ruthless on earth. They are not above brazenly slaughtering their own citizens to maintain power, a cruel fact they are proving again this year.
There is no Arab Spring for Syria this year, or any time soon, as long as this family retains power.
Hafez Assad — the late father of this troubled nation’s current President Bashar Assad — demonstrated his brutality most egregiously in 1982 when he murderously put down any hints of opposition to his rule in the city of Hama.
He completely destroyed a large part of the old city, bombing it with air strikes, then killing everybody in the path of his tanks and artillery.
The death toll was estimated at 20,000 or more; the president’s military brother boasted of killing 38,000 citizens.
Then President Assad ordered the site levelled with construction rollers. The flattened landscape, with the untold broken human bones of men, women, children and pets remained visible on the surface for years afterward.
It was a ghoulish reminder that there were no limits to what President Assad would do to preserve power in a fractious nation.
Hafez Assad died in 2000 and was succeeded by his oldest surviving son Bashar Assad 12 years ago this month. He maintains power with the same bloody grip as his father. Though he trained to be a physician in Syria and England, Bashar Assad has turned out to be Dr. Death.
Like his father, President Bashar Assad is killing his own people by authorizing air strikes on fractious neighbourhoods in his own country, indiscriminately killing and maiming men, women and children. An estimated 16,000 Syrians have died in the past 14 months.
President Assad denies that any religious, ethnic or political purges are happening, despite compelling video evidence to the contrary.
Six weeks ago, he pledged publicly to end the violence, but nothing positive has happened since. Last weekend, images of more than 100 assassinated Syrians from the town of Houla made their way around the world. They included men, women and children whose hands and feet had been bound together before they were assassinated.
President Assad expressed shock that such depravity could happen in Syria.
He asserted his regime had nothing to do with the merciless slaughter, blaming it on unnamed terrorists bent on scuttling his regime. But evidence indicates that some of the dead were killed by artillery shells, which are in the hands of Assad’s military, but not the rag-tag insurgents who want him driven from power.
Few reasonable people believe Assad’s lies, except regional allies and Russia, which trades actively with Syria and frequently uses a Syrian port.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, a noted Assad backer, is comfortable with torture and murder tactics from his days as an agent with the KGB spy agency.
The civilized world including the United States, Canada, France, Britain, Italy, Germany, Spain, and Australia expressed disdain for Assad’s story this week by announcing orders to expel Syrian diplomats. Those in Canada have until Sunday to depart.
Other nations like Russia lamented the slaughter without citing Assad’s regime as the culprit.
A groundswell of pleas has arisen around the world to end this kind of carnage.
A United Nations resolution called on Syria to end the violence, but it has no teeth and it has no legs.
The United States is out of Iraq and preparing to leave Afghanistan soon with a job half done. There’s no way they will take on a new open-ended military engagement in the middle of a presidential election year.
Canada and our allies are also bugging out soon, to mourn casualties, pay the bills, lie low and keep out of Middle East nation-building conflicts for years to come.
We are weary of war and casualties, even though the vast majority of us have been no more than casual spectators for the past generation.
Oppressed and beleaguered citizens of Syria know true weariness. Now they will learn wariness, learning that they cannot count on the free world for much more than moral support.
We are free to overlook them and that’s a damned shame, no matter what god you believe in.
Joe McLaughlin is the retired former managing editor of the Red Deer Advocate.