Hundreds of victims, especially children, lay struggling for breath in hospitals as parents and doctors tried desperately to revive them back to life.
Cut to hospital morgues: Corpses lie on top of one other — again, the majority of them being children, their lives extinguished not by bullets, bombs and shrapnel, but by the use of a deadly, poisonous gas. The scale of such wholesale butchery is unheard of, especially in this day and age.
Therefore the question is: What happened to Barack Obama’s purported threat of the Syrian authorities crossing the “red line”? Have the boundaries been extended without his knowledge or has the world been lulled into a sense of lethargy over what is taking place in Syria? There is a sense of hopelessness.
More than the sheer scale of the tragedy that occurred near the capital city of Damascus, what will also stand out is the US’s lack of credibility, coupled with the West’s lack of integrity and the United Nation’s potency to address the incident with a sense of resolve.
Or are they too astounded to comprehend what just happened? Wednesday’s attack on thousands of innocent civilians will definitely change the pattern of the conflict in Syria.
The West has displayed its dilemma. The UN has failed pathetically to find a political solution and any attempt to diffuse the crisis has been highlighted by disagreements in the UN Security Council with Russia and China repeatedly vetoing resolutions.
Inspectors have failed to carry out comprehensive inspections for chemical weapons in Syria. This lethargy has only served to fan the flames of violence. The calls for international intervention are now set to go up. The US and the UN must now weigh the scale and consequence of any action. There is a likelihood that chemical weapons will be used again and Obama’s so-called red line will keep getting redrawn. The stakes in Syria have just gone up.
The US’s track record of intervening in crises in the Middle East has never been good. That report card has gone from bad to worse.
