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We Know What’s Happening in Syria
Russian bombing is prompting a mass exodus of terrified Syrians from Aleppo to the Turkish border. Credible estimates suggest 70,000 have fled; they’re the lucky ones: Those who remain are apt to be starved to death. The Syrian army and allied militias, including Iranian militias, will soon cut rebel-held zones of Aleppo off from Turkish supply lines. Russian airstrikes have been hitting villages north of Aleppo on the road to Turkey. Aleppo is on the verge of encirclement, which means hundreds of thousands of souls will be unable to escape. What we’re about to watch live, if we wish to, will probably be the largest siege since the Second World War.
The news that the Syrian government is exterminating detainees is on the front page of The New York Times today. You can read the details here. At some point the world will issue a teary apology to Syrians and there will be memorials to the Syrians and lots of children will hear about the terrible first half of the 21st century, and everyone will ask how this could have happened. If anyone ever says, “We didn’t know what was happening to them,” tell them: Shut up. We did.
There are now at least 2.5 million refugees from Syria in Turkey. Angela Merkel has been in Ankara to plead for Turkish help in reducing the influx of refugees to Europe. The EU has promised to give Turkey $3.3 billion if it can somehow make the refugees stop coming. In the past 48 hours, 35,000 Syrians have arrived at the Oncupinar gate at the Turkish border. Turkey has given refuge to civilians fleeing Syria throughout the war, but it’s come under very heavy pressure from the United States and Europe to seal off its border entirely. The refugee camp on the Turkish side of the Oncupinar gate has been largely shut for nearly a year. New arrivals have been sent to camps on the Syrian side, which Turkey claims are safe, for now. Turkish aid agencies are delivering humanitarian aid to these camps. Erdoğan has sworn that “If needed, we will let those brothers in.”
Another boatload of refugees drowned in the Aegean yesterday, including eleven children. This is now almost-daily news.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psYg06pj1do
The Turkish deputy prime minister is warning that in a worst-case scenario, 600,000 will escape from Aleppo and wind up on the Turkish border.
And it’s like a bad joke: Just as every EU member state is doing its utmost to seal its borders so better to keep Syrian refugees out, Frederica Mogherini, the EU foreign policy chief, has called on Ankara to let them in. Turkey, she’s insisting sonorously, “has a moral if not legal duty to provide protection to these people.”
The Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders (the Netherlands now holds the EU presidency), joined in the moralizing: “I look at these images of people standing at the Turkish border and I just wanted to underline the message people who are in humanitarian need should be allowed in.”
And the UN is joining the chorus: Turkey, it says, must open its borders to desperate Syrian refugees fleeing Aleppo, “in line with its international obligations to protect people fleeing conflict or persecution.”
I’m stunned by the moral blindness. The Turkish government has insisted — from the start, to its own very uncertain citizens — that Turkey has a moral duty to admit Syrian refugees. So I simply don’t know who Mogherini and Koenders are trying to persuade. Turkey closed its borders because Europe and the US pressured it to do so — chiefly because Europe doesn’t seem to be able to keep its own citizens from joining ISIS or turning into Nazis. And now Europeans are lecturing Turks about their moral and legal obligation to admit refugees?
Perhaps they should be trying to convince Europeans, instead? Or Americans?
Published in General
As a Christian I really do want to agree with Claire on this, and in the past have done so without any reservation. It is virtuous to offer help to these refugees.
Yet events have robbed any confidence I have in Western governments to appropriately handle large group of Muslim immigrants. They lack the confidence to enforce rule of law in the migrant communities, let alone convince them of assimilation.
Until I see that confidence return, our countries are weak swimmers tasked to rescue men drowning. We risk drowning ourselves and no one is rescued.
You are not thinking clearly. You smell of fear and timidity, which is the only thing preventing us from getting a nice outcome in Syria, our fear and timidity. The Russians want their bases and a continued presence and influence in Syria, Assad wants to stay in power, the West wants help for the beleaguered in Syria, Turkey wants help from the West for helping the beleaguered. All this comes to pass in my plan. Nobody is advocating a conventional war, rather you invent it as a false alternative to promote your desire for the West taking in refugees. It is a total fabrication on your part. None of the participants above should find major difficulties with the plan as outlined, accepting Assad and he doesn’t count. He can not interfere with our plan’s implementation unless the Russians go along, which they would not do.
I am with Austin. Manfred is trying to make some constructive solutions of supporting and rewarding Turkey to take in these refugees, and Claire is pooh poohing him. Moving these refugees into Europe let alone the US is not a solution.
Claire, I am very worried by your blindness about the islamization of Europe. The majority of children in several western European countries are now born into Muslim families. It’s demographics.
I think it a much better option than dying unarmed.
If they aren’t willing to train, fight, and die for their country they don’t deserve one.
So, other than accept millions of Muslim refugees, empty the place, what does who do? When Assad is removed then a different bunch will be slaughtered. Some country, people or regime has to take over and impose order and that too will lead to slaughter and look like Assad’s regime, unless they kill everyone not in their group. Is there a fix?
Nonsense. Accepting refugees from Syria and accepting Jews escaping from the Holocaust are not equivalent.
No nation had to put out pamphlets instructing Jews not to defecate in showers or grope women in public. Sudden influxes of Jews in New York didn’t coincide with a spike in sexual assaults on New Years Eve.
You don’t accomplish anything by accepting 1,000,000 young men into your country and then start advising your populace to make sure their ten-year-olds don’t sexually provoke the newcomers. And no one is being virtuous when you settle 750 refugees in a village of 102.
Apples are not oranges no matter how much you insist they’re both fruit.
The United States, using the democratic process, arrived at our response to this crisis in 2008. We then re-affirmed our decision in 2012.
The decision was that the U.S. is the problem, not the solution. The majority of Americans chose to not play an active role in shaping events around the world, to retreat.
It has led to chaos and misery in the Middle East and elsewhere. I disagreed, vigorously, at the time.
Nonetheless, now I have no desire to bring the chaos and misery to my home.
Well, slap my mamma and call me unvirtuous.
I’m just not in to cultural suicide.
Accepting refugees who embrace Stone Age beliefs into a modern culture only moves the problems from one nation to another. They have proven, through their treatment of women and gays, genitalia mutiliation, and other backwards acts that they aren’t fit for a modern western culture. Allowing millions in would be cultural suicide.
They got all five of them already? I hadn’t heard.
Convince Europeans and Americans of what? The solution to the Syrian refugee flood lies entirely within Syria, not in encouraging the flood in perpetuity.
And yes, that solution must be the application of violence. The only possible outcomes to an initial application of timidity is abject surrender or war.
Eric Hines
I tend to agree, but that doesn’t solve the refugee flood problem. We’re still stuck with the choices of perpetuating the flood as one component of surrender and solving the thing at its source with violence–war.
Eric Hines
Gee Claire – I didn’t see you shouting this much when Great Britain was killing 130K citizens a year throughout the 2000’s.
1.3M citizens dead at government hands isn’t chump change.
Claire,
At the risk of not being constructive I think I just want to make my point. If BHO had taken his opportunity 3 years ago to shock & awe Assad, taking over the country, and then gone on to a surge strategy immediately, I don’t think anything that would’ve happened would be as bad as this.
It’s all well and good to go on and on about an obsessive interventionist policy. However, if you fail to notice the obsessive non-interventionist policy that has taken its place you are not helping.
Sorry but I just needed to get that off my chest.
Regards,
Jim
Yeah -count me with the others. We’re facing barbarian invasions. One group of people is displaced from its home, they invade their neighbors, displacing them, who invade their neighbors, displacing them, who come knocking on the door of Empire seeking help. But once they are inside the borders the attacking and displacing simply continues -and there is no place for the Empire to displace to.
The ideal solution would be to nip the problem at the source -invade and crush ISIS and Syria. Doing so would be expensive and we’d have to kill a lot of people, and possibly antagonize Russia. So that’s off the table. All that remains, then, is containing the damage outside the Empire. Bringing the invasions and wars inside the border just means we get to share in the damage while feeling virtuous.
Matt Upton is correct. Unless we are willing to violently crack down on those divisions -at least within our own borders -we are weak swimmers more likely to add to the casualties.
All that’s left is throwing them things they can use to stay afloat a little longer -safe havens within Syria, arms and ammunition, training.
Manfred: “You are not thinking clearly.”
Man, Claire is thinking as clearly as you. She’s just not thinking the same as you.
And neither of you are thinking the same as me. Here’s my version of clear thinking: anyone who believes they actually understand the situation there is wrong. Anyone who believes they actually know a solution is wrong squared.
Unfortunately President Obama missed his chance when he first mentioned his line in the sand. The US could have destroyed the Syrian Air Force on the ground and destroyed Syrian airfields to include cratering the runways at the civilian airport in Damascus. Destroy all fuel depots for the Syrian Air Force as well. Helicopters could have been destroyed and then declare a no fly zone. Any sign of activity to repair the airfields brings more strikes. This would have kept the Russians out of Syrian airspace and made it much more difficult for Assad to conduct his own air support of his ground troops.
Agreed. Any proposal must begin and end with, “Is it even remotely likely that President Obama could be convinced to sign off on this, even without parading the action in the media?”.
To that end, your best hope, Claire, is to either convince him to end the pressure on Turkey to stop receiving migrants or convince him to make slight adjustments to his own plans already in effect.
Otherwise, policy proposals must wait a year, in which time the situation will change dramatically and with a few surprises. Only private actions are left to us.
Why not create a safe zone within Syria? Take the southern half of the country and protect it with Jordanian troops on the southern Jordanian border and Egyptian/Turkish/Saudi troops on the northern border of the safe zone. Essentially split Syria in half. All of this would be enforced with US air power and 50K US special forces. No more Syrian refugees. Keep them in their own country.
Claire, I don’t know what to say. There are only terrible choices and we (the commentators) are safely away (for the moment) from the danger zone. Small evils seems to gather more quickly into great evils than small goods aggregate into great goods. Strategically the mass migration now underway, like mass migration centuries ago, will transform Europe and now (possibly) America. Tactically there will be too many personal tragedies that will continue to drive this migration. America and Europe “chose poorly” and eventually will pay a price. And too many innocents will be paying a price today in the killing fields of Aleppo. There never is a “war to end all wars.” There is only and ever peace through strength, and America and Europe chose weakness.
All Muslim immigration to the West should have been halted the day after 9/11.
Wikipedia on Turkey and Jewish refugees:
Selahattin Ülkümen saved dozens of Turkish Jews and their families on Rhodes (a former Turkish possession and where he was stationed as a diplomat) but was unable to save the Greek Jews. Despite the fact that the Nazis succeeded in deporting 1673 Jews from Rhodes (and in ultimately murdering all but 151,) the Nazis were not satisfied and
continued
Ismail Necdet Kent, then Turkey’s Vice Consul in Marseilles, began by saving Turkish Jews from Nazi deportation and went on to provide visas not only for Turkish Jews but for others.
Namık Kemal Yolga; Turkish Vice Consul in Paris,
continued
Behiç Erkin, friend of Mustafa Kemal, career soldier and railway executive, arrived in France as to serve as Turkey’s Ambassador just weeks before WWII broke out. At that time,
continued
I think if we restrict refugees to women and children, insisting that men remain and fight for their nation there will be less propensity for folks to think they are going to stay here permanently.
These brave and principled men served Turkey well, assiduously protecting her nationals, often anybody who could plausibly be called a Turkish national, and even those who couldn’t.
They played for very high stakes, as Selahattin Ülkümen’s tragic story illustrates: the Nazis were more than willing to kill neutrals who got in their way.
Ülkümen was honored by Israel as Righteous Among the Nations. Israel awarded a medal to Yolga, Ülkümen and Kent; these men also were awarded by Turkey with its Supreme Service Medal in 2001.
The honorable behavior of a few Turkish diplomats in WWII in no way means that the US should today admit hundreds of thousands of Syrians, a small but significant number of whom are war criminals and jihadis.
That’s with inclement weather cancelling many Carnival events, and double the normal number of police assigned to the event. People accept the increased police presence because the memory of New Year’s is still fresh. For now.
Come with me on this journey: imagine if the Cologne police had not “screwed up” on NYE. Imagine that they had a large presence of officers, and had moved aggressively against what was apparently a large group of offenders. Imagine that by doing so they had prevented the worst of that debacle from happening.
What would the headlines the next morning say?
We Know What’s Happening in
Syriathe Middle EastYes, what is always occurring in this portion of the world. As when Assad’s patriarch annihilated Hama, as during the the Lebanese Civil War, as during the Iran-Iraq war, as during Saddam’s al-Anfal Campaign and on and on and on.
The massacres and slaughter never end and absent some sudden urge towards empire in this nation it is likely that it never shall. If there is ever to be peace in that region it will have to come from those who reside there finally deciding to choose that path.
I’m afraid the refugees are the weapon in our proxy war with Russia.
The situation is unlike our accepting Jewish refugees: once here, we had no issues with Jewish criminality or a Jewish will-to-power movement analogous to militant Islam.
Putin is hoping to flood us with marielitos to keep us off balance for a generation. If even a small percentage of these refugees are psychopaths, we’ll have incidents. And any form of saying “no” will be denying legitimate aid to widows and orphans, and so will reduce our stature before the world. There’s no downside for him here.
Fencing off a portion of Syria as a DMZ or refugee area may work, but it would be better if we acted on behalf of the UN as a humanitarian measure. This would require the UN to actually decide something, and would require some of our European allies to commit some of their tiny little armies to give it that coalition flavor.
Kerry needs to take an emergency meeting with the ward heelers in Turtle Bay.
PS. What the Russian bases are in Syria are hostages. They are surety against Russia invading Estonia/Latvia/Lithuania. Their existence is a godsend to us because, as much as they complicate things in Syria, they make it much easier for us to deter Russian aggression against the Baltic states.
‘What do you want more, Ivan, a little bit of the Baltic states or your Syrian possessions – your foothold on the Mediterranean?’
The southern half would include Damascus I doubt Assad would approve of losing his capital.