Bill Carmichael: Syria '“ Is there anything the world can do to end the slaughter?

IT is impossible to feel anything other than total horror at the images of young children foaming at the mouth and choking to death following a poison gas attack in Syria.
In this picture taken on Tuesday April 4, 2017, Abdul-Hamid Alyousef, 29, holds his twin babies who were killed during a suspected chemical weapons attack, in Khan Sheikhoun in the northern province of Idlib, Syria. Alyousef also lost his wife, two brothers, nephews and many other family members in the attack that claimed scores of his relatives. The death toll from a suspected chemical attack on a northern Syrian town rose to 72 on Wednesday as activists and rescue workers found more terrified survivors hiding in shelters near the site of the harrowing assault, one of the deadliest in Syria's civil war. (Alaa Alyousef via AP)In this picture taken on Tuesday April 4, 2017, Abdul-Hamid Alyousef, 29, holds his twin babies who were killed during a suspected chemical weapons attack, in Khan Sheikhoun in the northern province of Idlib, Syria. Alyousef also lost his wife, two brothers, nephews and many other family members in the attack that claimed scores of his relatives. The death toll from a suspected chemical attack on a northern Syrian town rose to 72 on Wednesday as activists and rescue workers found more terrified survivors hiding in shelters near the site of the harrowing assault, one of the deadliest in Syria's civil war. (Alaa Alyousef via AP)
In this picture taken on Tuesday April 4, 2017, Abdul-Hamid Alyousef, 29, holds his twin babies who were killed during a suspected chemical weapons attack, in Khan Sheikhoun in the northern province of Idlib, Syria. Alyousef also lost his wife, two brothers, nephews and many other family members in the attack that claimed scores of his relatives. The death toll from a suspected chemical attack on a northern Syrian town rose to 72 on Wednesday as activists and rescue workers found more terrified survivors hiding in shelters near the site of the harrowing assault, one of the deadliest in Syria's civil war. (Alaa Alyousef via AP)

US President Donald Trump spoke for many when he called the atrocity an “affront to humanity” adding: “When you kill innocent children, innocent babies…that crosses many lines.”

And US Ambassador Nikki Haley tried to shame the United Nations Security Council into action by brandishing pictures of the murdered children.

Fat chance!

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I am afraid the UN is a morally bankrupt organisation that spends 99 per cent of its time obsessing over the imagined crimes of Israel, while ignoring far worse human rights abuses that are routine across the Muslim world.

The UN has become little more than a platform for tyrants and racists to spout their bigotry, and the benighted civilians of Syria can expect very little help from that quarter.

Syria and its Russian allies have denied carrying out the nerve gas attack – well they would wouldn’t they? – and it is true, given the chaos that reigns in that fractured country, hard evidence is hard to come by. But the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is a ruthless dictator who has previous form for using chemical agents against his own civilian population.Incidentally, if you are waiting for the massed protests of leftists outside the embassies of Russia or Iran, Assad’s other main backer, you are in for a very long wait.

The Stop the War crowd don’t care tuppence for the suffering of civilians if it doesn’t fit in with their twisted narrative that anything bad that happens anywhere in the world is always the fault of the evil West. Killing babies is apparently absolutely fine by them, as long it is being carried out by Syria, Russia or Iran.

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Will the latest killings change anything? Some commentators are detecting a significant shift in US policy towards Syria. Only days ago the Trump administration was indicating that removing Assad was no longer a priority – a tacit admission that Obama’s bluster over ‘red lines’ was a miserable failure. Instead the focus was supposed to be on defeating the Islamic State.

Now the shock of the latest killings has changed the rhetoric with Trump condemning the attack in unequivocal terms and Haley hinting at unilateral action by the US if the UN fails to act.

The picture is further complicated by the fact that the Syrian opposition, while it may contain some genuine democrats, is also infested with some very bad jihadis indeed. Putin and Assad are determined to crush them – and they don’t much care if civilians get in the way.

So the question remains, what can the US and the West do and will it do any good? We have to accept that our options are limited despite the awfulness of what is happening in Syria. The conflict in Syria, as in Yemen and many other parts of the Middle East, is a proxy war between Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia – two unlovely tyrannies with absolutely appalling human rights records.

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This week’s poison gas attacks are just the latest iteration of a blood-soaked schism that has been tearing Islam apart for more than 1,300 years. Shia and Sunni have been slaughtering each other since the Battle of the Camel in 656 – and there is little sign the blood lust has been sated.

The unpalatable truth is that Western nations have very limited power to persuade Muslims to be more tolerant towards one another.

That doesn’t mean we should do nothing. For one thing we can offer help to refugees caught up in the fighting until it is safe for them to return to their homes. This is best done as close to Syria as possible, rather than recklessly flinging open Europe’s doors to all-comers, as Angela Merkel foolishly did. The security implications of such rash action are nothing short of terrifying.

But, in reality, the best we can hope for is that the US and other Western countries can apply sufficient pressure to Russia and Iran so that they, in turn, pressure Assad to curb the worst of his brutality.