Chemicals are not new to Syria’s civil war, but this wholesale slaughter of innocents has fired international outrage and ignited demands for missile strikes against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the likely instigator, presumed guilty. Syria’s 30-month civil war has killed 100,000 people and created almost seven million refugees. But images of children murdered in their beds is a new evil that has sparked a vengeful fury.
It is a fury, however, that must be channelled into a firm response that excludes an American-led military assault on Syria. To bomb Syrian targets for retribution sake will not bring the region any closer to peace. It will only prolong the war, provoke more killing and cause more civilian tragedy.
In denouncing the gassing of civilians and “the multiplication of massacres and atrocious acts,” Pope Francis called on all sides to end the “roar of the weapons” and seek a political solution to the conflict. “It is not clashes, but an ability to meet and to dialogue that offers prospects for a hope of resolving the problems,” he said.
That view is supported by Christian leaders throughout the Middle East. Syrian-born Melkite Catholic Patriarch Gregoire III Laham said intervention would only fuel more criminality, inhumanity and terrorism. “Enough!” he said. Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal pleaded for caution.
“We witness here a logic reminiscent of the Iraq war preparations of 2003,” he said. The Patriarchal Vicar for Jordan, Archbishop Maroun Lahham, urged Western leaders to stop acting like “policeman of democracy” in the region. “We hope the voice of reason — and for us, the voice of faith — prevails and that a political solution will be found,” he said.
More urgently needed than a military strike is mobilization of humanitarian aid. An immediate, massive and concerted relief offensive is desperately required to ease an escalating refugee crisis. Almost two million Syrians have fled the country and almost five million are displaced within Syria, according to the United Nations. The UN has launched a $5 billion emergency appeal to feed, clothe and shelter these desperate victims of war but, sadly, the UN’s bell-ringing for aid is being drowned out by the war drums.
World leaders should be attacking Syria’s growing humanitarian crisis as they impose tough, non-military sanctions on Assad and bring genuine and intense pressure on combatants to end the conflict through dialogue. Western missile strikes will achieve none of those objectives. They will only bring more death, destruction and brutality to a nation that has seen far too much misery already.