As the number of Syrian refugees climbs rapidly beyond 1 million, the need for increased funding to address the crisis is obvious, but the motivation for nations to actually provide those funds is not. The United Nation’s relief plan requests just over a billion dollars to fund its operations from January 2013 to June 2013, and a variety of donors [...]
Reworking the Strategy towards Iran. Netanyahu is becoming infamously impatient, and the reactors keep spinning (despite false claims to the contrary last week; I doubt we’ll ever really know what is actually going on in those nuclear plants). The current strategy cannot continue.
For those dying daily in Syria, all of our talk of bringing freedom to the world is illusory. The rhetoric only works if we act exceptionally, and right now America has a long way to climb.
A real plan for Syria is to consider the following: What is the cost of the fall of regime? Who would be left in power? Will there be a Syrian state?
Impotent or not, Orwell teaches me, it is writing about the hard topics, speaking out on Syria, that automatically breathes life into my words. Political purpose, it turns out, is nothing less than a writer’s very oxygen.
If anything, our track record in Libya is cause to never support rebel factions again. Overthrowing a tyrant like Qaddafi is something to be proud of, to be sure, but our work in Libya helped create a far larger mess.
Certainly an organization representing a global unified body would have the most legitimacy. The UN was formed with the core principles of peace and security in mind, but a lack of unity of member states only allows magnifies the problems on the ground.
Fighting has spread to Damascus, the capital, and to the largest city, Aleppo. This is not just sporadic gunfire, but real, bloody, daily fighting. Border crossing stations are being seized by the rebels, letting more lethal weapons seep through the porous Turkish border. Hundreds of defectors join the resistance every day. On all fronts, the rebels are advancing.
The SNC, which claims to be leading the uprising from outside Syria, is battling between leading an opposition movement against Assad’s authoritarian grip and gaining credibility among its civilian population and the Western world.
Today we are able to sit with our laptops and tablets and watch the horrors of a regime slaughtering its own people. But despicable as this inaction is, posting filmed clips on YouTube has become one of the only viable means for the Syrian people to call out for help.
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