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- iHaveNet.com: World
by Joel Brinkley
Samantha Power used to be best known for her tour-de-force book, "A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide", in which she correctly accused the United States of willfully ignoring genocide in Rwanda, Cambodia, Bosnia and elsewhere.
"Despite graphic media coverage," she wrote, "American policymakers" are "extremely slow to muster the imagination to reckon with evil."
Early this month, the
Well, the very next day, Syrian troops killed another 11 protestors. No soldiers returned to their barracks, not a single prisoner was released. The death toll continued to increase day by day.
So then on Saturday, the
This time, President Obama issued a statement, saying: "After the Assad regime flagrantly failed to keep its commitments, the
Well, Mr. President, where is your leadership?
Sure, Obama is preoccupied with the elections, the economy and assorted other dilemmas. But when is there ever a time when the United States is not facing several serious problems at the same time? One important measure of a presidency is its ability to react effectively to world events as they occur. That's why 50,000 people work for the
Now, more than eight months after Assad showed himself to be a mass murderer, guilty of crimes against humanity, Washington has proffered a few fallow sanctions and carefully worded statements. That's all.
Syria is a state sponsor of terror and a nuclear-weapons aspirant. Shouldn't Washington care?
The report quoted one Syrian who was walking home after Friday prayers in Homs and passed a military checkpoint. "After we passed, they started shooting down the street. Some old people had stayed in the mosque, but when they started to leave, the forces fired on them, on everyone passing in the street."
The United States dominates the NATO alliance, and in recent days Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO's secretary general, has been repeatedly offering this message: "Let me stress that NATO has no intention whatsoever to intervene in Syria." That's probably intended to assuage Russia's stated concern that approving stronger
But after the
The Foreign Policy Initiative, a generally conservative nonprofit institute, advocates "continued U.S. engagement -- diplomatic, economic, and military -- in the world." And it offers a long list of steps the U.S. could take in Syria, including: Impose travel bans on Syrian businessmen allied with Assad who have to travel as part of their work. Help Syrian exile groups counteract signal-interference technologies the government uses to block opposition radio and television broadcasts.
The list of low-cost but potentially effective measures is quite long. With those or other actions, it's important that Washington step up so that the U.S. is not, once again, guilty of an unwillingness "to reckon with evil."
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"United States Hesitant to 'Reckon With Evil' in Syria"