Image 01 Image 03

Is Syria becoming a 21st century Rwanda?

Is Syria becoming a 21st century Rwanda?

The horror unfolding in Syria of late has been truly shocking. Tens of thousands of Syrians have died in an increasingly bloody civil war.

The situation in Syria has become even more appalling lately, and one wonders if a bloodbath on the scale of Rwanda is possible, particularly if Assad falls.

“This massive loss of life could have been avoided if the Syrian government had chosen to take a different path than one of ruthless suppression of what were initially peaceful and legitimate protests by unarmed civilians,” [U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi] Pillay said.

“As the situation has continued to degenerate, increasing numbers have also been killed by anti-government armed groups, and there has been a proliferation of serious crimes including war crimes, and — most probably — crimes against humanity, by both sides.”

The 60,000, she said, “is likely to be an underestimate of the actual number of deaths.” Citing the discovery of mass graves in newly liberated government bases, Alhamadee, the activist, said: “The number I think is far greater than this, and lots of people are missing.”

“The recording and collection of accurate and reliable data has grown increasingly challenging due to the conflict raging in many parts of the country,” Pillay said.

Rupert Colville, a U.N. spokesman, agrees that the number “is probably a minimum” and reflects a killing field of war crimes.

“There’s not a shadow of doubt now that war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed. That said, in each individual case, the final judgment has to be made by a court. It’s hard to quantify at this point,” he said.

“This is a classic case of a conflict that’s spiraling downwards, becoming ever more ghastly. We’ve seen this before in the Balkans and other places. The worse it becomes, the more difficult it is to resolve.”

DONATE

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.

Comments

Unfortunately, I admit that I think we should let these savages kill each other off at whatever numbers they choose. Their fundamental beliefs demand that they destroy our western civilization, and I consider us to be at war with them even though our government does not, and even though it is politically incorrect to say things like this. I am sick and tired of reading about atrocity after atrocity committed by muslims against Christians, with no criticism of those atrocities from our atrocious government.

    Rick in reply to Rick. | January 3, 2013 at 11:27 am

    I should have written “Christians and Jews” in that I consider us all in the same under-attack boat.

      Uncle Samuel in reply to Rick. | January 3, 2013 at 1:56 pm

      The same Morsi that in 2010 quoted the Koran saying Jews were apes and pigs, is begging the Jews to come back to Egypt.

      Perhaps he should appeal to the liberal Jews who voted for Obama.

    Fluffy Foo Foo in reply to Rick. | January 3, 2013 at 2:37 pm

    Christian Syrians seem to have sided with Assad and are no doubt participating alongside of him in some cases.

    They are a minority like the Alawites are a minority… they’ve worked together to defend themselves over the years, and now the majority will do what they’ll do.

    The human rights atrocities are on both sides of the conflict. A Sunni Muslim majority will be something like Egypt or Tunisia though, and it will become more Islamic and conservative.

      They’re fascist not conservative.

        Fluffy Foo Foo in reply to jdkchem. | January 3, 2013 at 2:46 pm

        Maybe, but not all the Sunnis are fascists. There are variations, like between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists. Both aren’t optimal and the Salafists are evil, but there are shades of conservative Islam or fascist Islam.

        Don’t mistake what conservative means in America to what it means in an Islamic country.

They don’t use machetes in Syria.

Having a hard time bringing myself to care. Can’t we just let the Kurds have it?

We too often try to compare other countries to us. As such we encourage democracy over authoritarian rule. Most of the time it turns out not so good such as in Iran, Tunisia, Egypt etc.

IOW, be careful for what you wish for. The old Yugoslavia comes to mind and we know how that turned out. They were much better off under Tito.

We would be better advised to consolidate our interests and draw a red line in the sand. Other than that, we need to keep out of most controversial foreign events…

    Fluffy Foo Foo in reply to GrumpyOne. | January 3, 2013 at 2:39 pm

    Tito died though, Tito died. Yugoslavia disintegrated without the U.S. doing anything. The U.S. only got involved well after the fighting had started. And by that time Sarajevo, an Olympic city, was largely destroyed.

      GrumpyOne in reply to Fluffy Foo Foo. | January 3, 2013 at 9:34 pm

      Exactly.

      We ignored the politics and later got involved at a much greater cost.

      Had we had a functioning CIA covert capability, that outcome could have been substantially different and at much lower cost.

      To be frank, we’re not at all that smart with our foreign policy…

how can you have “crimes against humanity” when there are arguably no humans involved?

i say let them kill each other to their heart’s content, execute any survivors for said crimes, then put all the Paleostinians from Gaza and the West Bank on the empty lands.

problem solved.

Please stop. Syria == arabs killing arabs. Rwanda == not the same at all, at the end of the day.

Inshallah

And I’m supposed to care about this? As wolverine307 so astutely said, “Inshallah”.

No one has summed up the atrocious nature of the Islamic hell of Syria better than ‘The Road to Damascus by Sultan Knish, Daniel Greenfield. – http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-road-to-damascus.html

“Forget the Grand Prix or the Daytona 500, the real race right now is the race to Damascus. The racers include Syrian rebels in pickup trucks with mounted machine guns and homemade tanks, toting weapons and equipment supplied and paid for by Qatar and Turkey, and more covertly by the British and French intelligence services. Racing along with them are carloads of international diplomats urging their governments to give the militias more money and more weapons.”
[…]
“The Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah’s militias out of Lebanon are shooting at Al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood militias from across the Middle East and even Europe in one of those unique displays of family entertainment that you wish would go on forever, but that won’t, because despite the Hasish-fed bravado, supplemented with meth from Iran’s top laboratories, the whole shooting match only as long as it takes the side with the weakest bladders to run away, and then both sides brag about their great victory on YouTube and Facebook.”

Ask me if I care. koranimals killing koranimals is great news.

The most disgusting Syria-related video is this Imam giving his blessing on the gang rape of Syrian women.
http://www.radicalislam.org/news/saudi-cleric-issues-fatwa-allowing-gang-rape-syrian-women

“This massive loss of life could have been avoided if the Syrian government had chosen to take a different path than one of ruthless suppression of what were initially peaceful and legitimate protests by unarmed civilians,” [U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi] Pillay said.

Sure, but then Assad (aka, ‘Pencilneck’) wouldn’t be Assad, now would he?

Of course a fascist/socialist brutal thug will choose to kill large numbers of people in order to keep power. If he allows a ‘different path’, he loses power and ends up in a third-rate villa in Mauritania.

The High Commissioner is either hopelessly naive or he’s peddling a very cynical point of view.

We now hear calls for Champ to do something about Syria; alternately we hear criticisms about what he should have done.

Like what, exactly?

    Fluffy Foo Foo in reply to stevewhitemd. | January 3, 2013 at 2:43 pm

    Bomb of course, like in Libya. The problem with Syria though would be that you’d have to probably put boots on the ground to keep Salafists from massacring bunches of people. It’s like Bosnia.

      stevewhitemd in reply to Fluffy Foo Foo. | January 3, 2013 at 3:59 pm

      Really? Who’s in favor of American boots on the ground in Syria?

      The Democrats who ran from Iraq in 2009 and are running from Afghanistan in 2013?

      The Pubs who, if they so much as breathed support for boots on the ground, would be pounded by the Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) for being fluffy-bunny killers?

      Ha. There is no serious politician from either party in America who will vote for boots on the ground. And bombing, as you may have noticed, doesn’t stop anything.

        Fluffy Foo Foo in reply to stevewhitemd. | January 3, 2013 at 6:00 pm

        Steve,

        You asked what they could do, not what is going to happen. They could bomb and/or put boots on the ground. I have a feeling that once Assad falls and if the Salafists start massacring Christians Obama would put boots on the ground to try and protect the Christians.

        If he doesn’t the United States will have allowed Christians to be genocided. Not good politics in America.

        You wouldn’t want the Salafists to massacre Christians right?

Don’t rejoice when your enemy falls; don’t let yourself be glad when he stumbles. Otherwise the LORD will observe and disapprove, and he will turn his anger away from him.
(Proverbs 24:17-18)

    BannedbytheGuardian in reply to David Yotham. | January 3, 2013 at 4:55 pm

    There are many references to Syria in the bible that are backed by historical & archeological evidence.

    Not sure this proverb is helpful .

Instead of lamenting the Syrian government’s poor choices, we need to stop myopically focusing on the immediate problem. It is obvious the Obama administration will continue to fail to learn anything because they can’t and won’t acknowledge their mistakes that made this situation possible.

Had Barack Obama in 2009 supported the Iranian people instead of selling them out for a non opportunity to make nice with the Mullahs controlling Iran, Syria’s rulers would have not been emboldened to slaughter their own people by the thousands. Assad is propped up by the Mullahs in Iran, without them there is no Assad, period. This is what happens when you have a community organizer in the WH playing checkers instead of a strategic thinker playing the world chess game. The incompetence of Obama continues to costs thousands of lives a year in the M.E. from Tunisia to Syria.

If you want peace in the M.E. then you have to deal with the Shiite heretics in Iran, at this point let the Sunnis sort out the mess in Syria. Yes, hundreds of thousands will die from the Sunni/Shiite sectarian strife but that is the price of peace and stability now required due to the incompetence of Barack Obama. Failing that resolution in Syria, Iran will move on in it’s belief system of the Mahdi to strike directly at Saudi Arabia plunging the whole region into war. The Shiite sect was a backwater diversion in Islam until the incompetent Jimmy Carter allowed the Shah of Iran to fall. Now millions must die to re-establish the balance in the Islamic world. But Obama will have his $10/gal gasoline from $200/barrel oil because his cultic belief in AGW. And you say the world isn’t run by crazy people?

    BannedbytheGuardian in reply to dscott. | January 3, 2013 at 4:47 pm

    Except that all sides in the Iran thing were /are Shiite.

    Backing one side over the other would only be a temporary.

    The Shah is not coming back anytime soon.

Let’s be sure to let them kill eachother.

Until the ‘Arab Spring’, which our legacy media hailed as the rise of ‘democracy’ in the Middle East, I never imagined I’d find myself rooting for monsters like Ghaddafi or Assad (or, indeed, hoping that Russia and or Iran backs Assad well enough to help him win).

The reason is simple: The regimes that are replacing these monsters are infinitely worse. Al Qaeda led the fight against Ghaddafi. The Muslim Brotherhood replaced the Egyptian dictatorship. When Assad goes, there are a variety of terrorist organizations that could take his place – any/all of which will be far worse for the US / Europe / Israel than Assad ever was.

So, yeah, wish this war would go on forever, but end it will and we would ALL (including the people of Syria) be better off if Assad manages to stay in power.