Obama, Syria and Chemical Weapons: The Conflict's Impossible Resolution

While yesterday we celebrated the abolition of slavery, couldn’t we, while acknowledging the courageous events of the past, deal with the cowardice, both small and large, of today?

In 1942 Anne Frank, in her attic, had heard talk of “gas chambers”; in 1941, Winston Churchill spoke of “unspeakable crimes.” But no one could imagine such a monstrosity. Since then, however, we have seen what man is capable of.

The American ‘Red Line’

Each time — in Rwanda, in Srebrenica, on the land of Iraqi Kurds — they say “never again,” but each time they recreate the same cowardice. The same thing is happening again before our eyes in Syria, where an entire population is being slaughtered. We cannot say that we didn’t know, since journalists have born witness to this tragedy for two years — a tragedy that has left at least 70,000 dead while creating more than 1 million refugees and 4 million displaced persons.

For several months rumors of the use of chemical gas by the regime have circled. In December, the American magazine Foreign Policy published a piece about a diplomatic cable from the U.S. Consulate General in Istanbul, which the Obama administration seemed to have made a “compelling case” with regard to the use of these weapons. Western governments had then warned that the use of chemical weapons was a “red line” that Bashar al-Assad’s regime should not cross.

Syria: Let Down Internationally?

This time it’s no longer a rumor: The videos show victims suffocating and vomiting. On Friday the special correspondent from [French publication] Liberation in Syria brought back new evidence. “I think, without a doubt, it’s a sarin gas attack. The symptoms match. And several members of the medical staff have also been contaminated when they weren’t even at the scene of the attack. This doesn’t happen with conventional weapons,” said Kawa Hassan, director of the hospital in Afrin where the victims were treated.

On May 10, Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan said that Syria, in using chemical weapons, had “long since crossed” the red line set by the U.S. And so, now is when the U.S. and Russia come to offer Syrian rebels and the regime a chance to negotiate a solution at an upcoming international conference.

While the insurgency coldly responded by saying that Bashar al-Assad must step down before negotiations can move forward, this announcement has, needless to say, overjoyed Damascus. France, which had taken a position at the forefront in recognizing the Syrian opposition and had committed to delivering weapons to them, has backtracked by declaring that there “could not be a delivery of weapons.” In proposing the wrong solution together with Moscow, the U.S. has given the first signal of its abandonment of the Syrian people.