Last summer US President Barack Obama said that if Syria transports or uses chemical weapons he would change his mind about military intervention in the country.
One month after this announcement, the American secretary of state said Syrians are indeed moving chemical substances for military use. This was while White House analysts said it had been moved to Hezbollah, but then did nothing about it.
Leaked information emphasizes Bashar Assad’s use of chemical weapons. News reports say he used chlorine gas. Some point out, however, it was only chlorine, gas from World War I that causes suffocation and is different from nerve gas. Then it turned out he used lethal mustard gas and still no one moved.
During a security conference this month, an Israeli official said the Syrian regime was using sarin gas, which is a nerve gas. But we still haven’t seen any American warplane put a stop to Assad’s actions.
A commentator in Haaretz newspaper warned that the countries of the region are watching international reaction to the Assad regime. It is clear the Syrian president is watching and sees that no one wants to put a stop to the massacres taking place in Syria. We are finding ourselves in a laboratory where everything is being tested, from weapons of mass destruction, to testing of international reaction, and where everybody knows what’s happening and nobody intends to do anything about it.
In the beginning when the international community bacame a mute spectator to the use of chlorine gas, Assad moved onto the lethal sarin. We should be reminded here that a drop of sarin kills a human being, a quarter of a milligram kills a child, and the Assad regime has tons of this deadly chemical.
Why the international community is showing callous indifference to these developments? Is it because Syria is a country with no oil, or is it because the Baathist regime is fighting Al-Qaeda? How can we say to the world that the fight against terrorism or criminal systems is an international duty? How can the US State Department justify its statements of denouncing the infringements of human rights in the countries of the region and keep silent about the suffocation of thousands of innocent people with the outlawed sarin gas? The question that we should all think about tomorrow is how can the governments of the region be stopped from buying and storing chemical weapons that are cheap but lethal?
When Saddam Hussein was kicked out of Kuwait through international collective military action, it was said this was a message for all. The threat to nations is a costly issue. When Afghanistan was bombed and Bin Laden and his allies, the Taleban left, it was said this was a message against terrorism in the world, and that they would be chased wherever they may be around the globe.
We should admit that everyone has learned lessons, states did not invade each other, all terrorist groups hid and governments did not dare deal with them publicly.
The massacres Assad and his regime committed over the past two years was unexpected. People did not expect military planes, tanks and missiles to bombard civilians. They did not expect the use of chemical weapons either. So there is a message here, store all the weapons you can, because you might need to use them one day.
We should not be surprised if Assad decides to gas 100,000 human beings if he becomes impatient and wants to end the uprising. He will know no one will do anything to stop him.
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