It’s been more than two weeks since nearly 1,400 Syrians living outside of Damascus lost their lives to what is widely believed a chemical weapons attack.
Since then, the event — and America’s potential response — has consumed international dialogue, dominating the airwaves, cluttering Facebook feeds, and driving Twitter trends. And it should. It is tragic. It is deplorable. It is unacceptable. It cannot be ignored.
But I cannot help but think that at some point between the endless Crossfire-style media discourse, the inflammatory Facebook memes accusing President Obama of partnering with Al Qaeda, and the recent psycho-analysis of Vladimir Putin’s Op-Ed, America overlooked an important point.
It frustrates and saddens me to scroll through Facebook and see people I know sharing this:
I don’t think that anyone who posted this photo would say they do not care about what is happening to the Syrian people. But nonetheless, they are missing the point. They are driving the attention away from the humanitarian needs facing over 6 million Syrians throughout the region and focusing instead upon their approval or disapproval of the American president.
They are turning a moral issue into a political one. Destroying the Syrian regime’s chemical weapons stockpiles or requiring them to turn them over to international community is not helping Al Qaeda (which has been linked to some within the Syrian opposition); it is seeking to help the Syrian people, who were the victims of these attacks and who are not Al Qaeda. It is diverting attention from the horrific deaths in Syria to our implied obligation to American patriotism.
While America’s leaders ponder and purport various options for responding to this one horrific incident, it is also important that the American public not lose sight of exactly that: it is one horrific incident following on the bloody heals of thousands of horrific incidents that have been perpetrated against the Syrian people for almost three years.
Now certainly this is not a war that’s easy to end. This is not a conflict that’s easy to understand. It’s not a battle that’s black and white; atrocities have been perpetrated by both sides, and that’s important to acknowledge. This is not a war about chemical weapons or any other weapon of mass destruction. It is a war whose roots run deep, divided along sectarian lines. It is a conflict stirred up by damage done over 100 years ago as European colonial powers used Arab nations as their pawns, dividing lines in the desert sand based on their own economic interests, with little regard for the people whose ancestors had called that land home for countless generations. It is a war that affects more than just Syria, though this is a fact we prefer to ignore. A war that promises to frustrate the dynamics between ethnic and religious sects in the region for decades. A war that could potentially re-define the geography of the Middle East as we know it.
But somewhere along the way, the tragic realities of this bloody conflict have sadly been moved to the back burner of the global dialogue and, as a result, to the back burner of American minds. It’s not that we don’t care that Syrians are suffering – certainly we do. But our focus has shifted from how this war is affecting Syrians to how it could impact Americans; from what we can do to help the Syrian people to how we can prevent another president from dragging us into another armed conflict in the Middle East.
While I don’t pretend to have a clue as to how to resolve the Syrian conflict, I strongly believe this is a conflict that cannot be ignored; this is a conflict that compels a humanitarian response.
The uncomfortable truth is that Syria was a tragedy that necessitated our response long before the latest use of chemical weapons. The 7,000+ children who died at the hands of conventional warfare over the past three years are just as precious, the loss of their lives just as tragic, as the 400 who were gassed this August. It is important that we remember that this horrific war, fought primarily using conventional weaponry, has decimated Syria’s physical, economic, and social infrastructure, claiming over 100,000 lives along the way.Neighborhoods have crumbled. Families have been torn apart. Children have been orphaned. Millions have fled their homes and their country. And we have watched it all unfold from the comfort of our own living rooms, collectively saying very little until now.
A humanitarian crisis so large and so complex that it is being touted as the worst humanitarian crisis since the Rwandan genocide of 1994, the war in Syria and the refugee crisis that has resulted, is more than a political issue — it is a moral imperative. Although Americans may disagree as to whether or not the US military should engage in Syria, there should be little debate about the urgent need to engage in a humanitarian response.America’s “war fatigue” does not buy us a moral pass to ignore the dire conditions of the Syrian people.
Syrians are experiencing “war fatigue” as well, but unfortunately they don’t have the luxury of submitting a petition to their President asking him to opt for a peaceful resolution rather than violent one. They can’t post memes to facebook and hope that the bombing will stop.
The United Nations reports its latest number of registered refugees exceeds 2 million — and has grown by 1.7 million in just a year. The number of internally displaced within Syria, although difficult to measure, is estimated between 4 – 6 million. By the end of 2013, it is predicted that 10 million people – over half the country’s entire population – will be displaced. This is a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions, with potentially disastrous global consequences to economic stability and safety.
No, we cannot solve all the world’s problems. No, we cannot engage in military intervention on multiple fronts to “fight for the freedoms of others.” I am not arguing for either of these things. But we can look at people who are hurting, people who have lost everything, and stand with them, backing them with our words and our resources. We can promote peaceful solutions to this endless violence by promoting peace talks and increasing access to humanitarian aid.
America really can’t sit on this idea that we should just take care of our problems here at home and let the world solve its own problems. The world is interconnected and interdependent. When one area suffers, the rest of us will eventually feel the impact of that pain. When one country makes a mistake, the rest of us will, eventually, experience a consequence of that choice. Are we really content to turn our backs on the people of Syria?
