The Times today highlights the horror of the recent massacre in Syria (£):
The children of Houla were not killed by random shelling. The UN yesterday revealed that they were murdered one by one. The militia came in the night armed with knives and guns, and the young victims were executed with a bullet to the head or a knife to the throat.
One photograph shows a cherubic baby girl, no older than 2, with a tiny gold ear-stud. She is wrapped in a white shroud. Half her skull has been hacked or blown away. A saucer of bone juts from a bloody gash in what remains of her head.
Another shows what appears to be a boy of perhaps 6 or 7. The blanket in which he is wrapped has fallen away to expose a bare white shoulder. He looks as if he is sleeping, but the back of his head has been lopped off like the top of a boiled egg. His brain lies on the blanket behind him.
A third shows a pretty young girl staring upwards, her mouth slightly open as if smiling. Above her right eye there is a large, bloody bullet hole surrounded by a mess of flesh and bone.
The pictures go on, some mercifully out of focus, most far too shocking to print in The Times though our failure to do so spares the Assad regime.
There is a baby wearing nothing but a nappy, seemingly untouched except that it lacks an arm. Another young girl wearing a blood-soaked T-shirt with the word "Baby" or "Dolly" written on it has had her jaw shot away. A man carries the body of a child with only half a head remaining.
And so it continues. I have nothing to add to what I've written on this blog about the case for external intervention in such circumstances, and about the doctrine of a responsibility to protect. I will simply quote from the Times leader (£):
There are definitions of what constitutes a war crime and a crime against humanity. If these crimes do not satisfy them, the terms are empty.
.....
There are many things said and written about the legality of intervention in foreign countries. But there has also been, in recent years, a burgeoning if incomplete recognition of what is called the "responsibility to protect". This partly refers to a government's responsibility to keep its citizens from harm, but it also applies to the duty of the international community to make sure that this happens. Put bluntly, the question asks itself in this way: how much more murder has to happen before we feel obliged to take action to stop it?
The editorial goes on to consider practical measures:
In the first instance we must try to alter radically the balance of calculation being made in Damascus. Singly, or with the help of powers such as Turkey, or in a wider alliance Britain should seek to take active measures to isolate and discomfort the regime and, more importantly, to protect civilians. The British Government should take the most stringent action it can to cause economic pain to Mr Assad, his family (including those living in this country) and his officials, including the seizure of assets.
It should investigate, without delay, the practicability of establishing safe havens on the border of Syria, Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, where civilians and opponents of the regime will be guaranteed protection from regime forces. These safe havens may require commitment of troops, artillery and air defences. The use of drones for surveillance over civilian areas should be examined. And if necessary the arming of rebels to enable them to resist the regime forces and to protect their own people should be contemplated, and soon.
This newspaper is as wary as anyone in Britain of becoming once again involved in foreign struggles. The country is weary of years of doing so much of the world’s military heavy lifting and is anything but flush with public cash. So this is not the way we hoped it would work out. We wanted and argued to give peace a chance, even as it became clear that the Syrian regime had little interest in reform. And it would be possible to look the other way. But what kind of country would Britain be, and what kind of people would young Syrians take us for, if we allowed the slaughter to continue? President Assad should know that the period of "do nothing" is over.
I will add a question of my own, first formulated some years ago. If we do not come to the aid of others who are under grave assault, in acute danger or crying need, how could we reasonably expect others to come to our aid in similar emergency? How could we consider anyone to be obligated to help us? Is that the world we want - one governed by a contract of mutual indifference?