Boston and Homs

The horror of the Boston marathon bombings is still sinking in, but I imagine that Americans will regard this as an iconic event.  Whoever the perpetrators were, they chose a place and event that are hard to forget.  “Boston marathon” will join “9/11” and “Oklahoma City” as symbols of violence aimed not only at the individuals killed and wounded but at America as a whole.  The evil intent is all too apparent.

Imagine then what Syrians feel as they face 100 or so attacks of this magnitude and greater every day in a country 2.5 times the size of Massachusetts (with a population almost four times as large).  Often random but also targeted at hospitals and bakeries, the attacks are intended to frighten the civilian population in rebel areas and get them to refuse to help, or to expel, the armed groups who are challenging the rule of Bashar al Asad.

I spent an hour or so with a commander of one of those armed groups yesterday.  His first priority was to bring down Asad.  His second was to protect civilians, especially at risk minorities, in his AOR (area of operations), which is near Homs.  The fighting there is particularly fierce on the southern edge of the city, along the road that links Damascus with Tartus and Latakia on the western coast.  A former Syrian army soldier, the commander and his colleagues were appalled at lack of discipline and warlordism among the rebel forces, who are all too often irregulars in every sense of the word.  Freeing kidnap victims, taken for ransom, is becoming one of a rebel commander’s many responsibilities.

It is hard for any of us to imagine the kind of disorder that prevails in Syria.  Something like half a million Syrians have fled Homs, even as others from worse-hit communities pour in.  Those of us who remember the rioting and burning after the murder of Martin Luther King have some idea of how bad things can get, though that was limited to particular neighborhoods and lasted a week or so, not more than two years.  Boston rose quickly to the challenge of many dozens of people injured.  Its trauma centers and doctors are trained and equipped for this kind of disaster.  Syria’s hospitals were less well-equipped and its doctors less well-trained when the rebellion began.  There is little hospital capacity left, though the remaining medical personnel try hard to keep up.

President Obama promised quickly to bring the Boston marathon perpetrators to justice.  As there are unexploded bombs, the police and FBI will have something to work with.  Surveillance video and other routine electronic surveillance may also help.  There is a good chance the perpetrators will be found, though other terrorist bombings teach us that it may be a long while before the full picture is known.

In Syria, the perpetrators are all too well known:  the Syrian army is fighting what its leadership regards as terrorists, even as it targets civilian populations.  This is a war crime, one for which the highest authority in Syria–Bashar al Asad–is all too clearly responsible, in my way of thinking.  Syrians will want to try him, in Syria, if they get the chance.  Even those who oppose the death penalty in principle see no alternative in this case.  A lot of us felt the same way about Timothy McVeigh.

Boston is not Homs.  Homs is not an American responsibility.  Syrians will determine how their revolution ends.  But they need help.  Several years ago on a visit to Vietnam, our driver and guide (both northerners who had been on Ho Chi Minh’s side of the war and suffered American bombing) told us they had given up a day’s pay to contribute to Hurricane Katrina relief.  New Orleans wasn’t their responsibility, for sure.  Call us bleeding hearts, but the gesture brought tears to our eyes.  I’m pleased to learn of the secret American effort to provide humanitarian aid in Syria.  But there is more that needs doing.  If we are not already doing it in secret, we need to consider the proposition again.  Let’s bring tears of gratitude to Syrian eyes.