If it takes poisoned babies to get the US to act in Syria, then it is also time to act in Africa, too.
The death of babies is the death of babies, be it in Syria or in Africa.
I.
Finally, after more than six years of passivity and false promises on the unnecessarily prolonged civil war in Syria, we have some action — a military response to Syria’s criminal use of chemical weapons on men, women and children.
As of this writing, we do not know what the long-term consequences of this shift in American policy will mean. We do know:
• The evil, Stalinlike, Hitlerlike Bashar Assad, the president of what was once Syria, has gotten a message that he no longer has carte blanche for any brutality he wishes to inflict on his people.
• Russia has gotten a message that it no longer has carte blanche to back Assad in any and every brutality he engages in.
• China and North Korea have gotten a message that North Korea’s unrestricted pursuit of a nuclear weapon capable of hitting the US is not a risk-free enterprise.
• Chemical weapons are not likely to be deployed by Assad again any time soon.
• The American action has not led to American “boots on the ground,” nor to any other threat to American soldiers or security, notwithstanding the apologists for American inaction during the Obama years of indifference and meaningless, mindless, threat-free negotiations by the untenable John Kerry.
President Trump blamed the current use of chemical weapons in Syria on former President Obama’s lack of follow through on his threat to respond to the Syrian use of a weapon of mass destruction, on Obama’s failure to honor his own “red line” in 2013; and instead to rely on Assad’s word that he had completely destroyed his chemical weapons.
George W. Bush had his massive intelligence failure on wmd in Iraq. Obama had his massive intelligence failure on wmd in Syria. Trump was right. However, hindsight is not the issue now. Trump is president. It is time for him to act. He did. Whether he will now follow through to see the end of wmd in Syria and the destruction of the Assad regime remains to be seen.
Already we hear that regime change is impossible in Syria from the very same people who said that a strike against the wmd in Syria is impossible. Neither is true, even if regime change is complicated. A single strike in Syria will emerge as little more than a symbolic gesture if it is not followed up with a strategy to depose Assad.
A viable first step is to impose a no fly zone over Syria. That is, to take out Assad’s air power totally, not to rest content with a single strike against wmd. Assad has managed mass destruction without the use of wmd. He himself is a wmd. The dangers to the US of a no fly zone are no greater than the dangers from last week’s strike. That is, virtually none.
II.
President Trump said that he was moved to act on Syria by the pictures of babies suffocating to death from the chemical weapon deployed by Assad’s forces.
To our eternal shame, the same pictures of dying babies will soon be available from Nigeria, Somalia and South Sudan if action is not taken — this time, not military action, but humanitarian action. These three African countries face famine. Sixteen million people are at risk of death.
Here the crisis is not man-made, as in Syria; but, in a sense, it is man-made. While we cannot control drought, we can control the delivery of nutritious food. We can allocate the funds to make this possible. We can be a moral voice. We can continue to be the major donor to alleviate the effects of such catastrophic events. It has long been the honor of the US to be the major donor in such circumstances, to stand up for humanity.
“We are facing the largest humanitarian crisis since the creation of the UN,” Stephen O’Brien, the UN humanitarian chief, is quoted in The Denver Post as telling the UN Security Council last month.
In a sense, this humanitarian crisis is also linked to military action. One cause of this crisis is the severe malnutrition in areas affected by violence from the radical Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram (again, as reported in the Post); and one of the consequences of this crisis will be more uncontrolled migration to Europe, more deaths along the trails and seas to the continent north of Africa.
We salute President Trump for cutting funds to UN used to run the political arms of this desiccated immoral empire, but funds for food for the starving? No, those funds should not be cut, and those funds need not be directed to the UN generally. They can be earmarked for the UN World Food Program.
These funds are not “foreign aid,” whose value one may debate, though we agree with the bipartisan view that foreign aid is an essential component of America’s national security. Be that as it may, food for the starving is different.
It is to preclude the same pictures of dying babies coming from Africa that came from Syria.
Funds for food, at least in Nigeria, are also part and parcel of the fight to defeat radical Islam, be it ISIS, al-Qaida or Boko Haram. It’s the same enemy. It’s the same brutality. It’s the same tactics. It just requires, in the African context, a different response. Not Tomahawk missiles, but funds for food.
We look to President Trump to demonstrate the same leadership in Africa that he has begun to demonstrate in Syria.
Copyright © 2017 by the Intermountain Jewish News
