Tuesday, September 17, 2013

17-Sep-13: With the UN report in, what's reasonable to expect from Syria's global colleagues?

Times of Israel front page at this hour
There's an insightful headline at the top of the Times of Israel website at this moment.
‘We can hurt enemies even without chemical weapons,’ warns Syrian PM
Most readers know this is true. Chemical weapons, according to the Syrian war manual, are reserved not so much for their enemies but for their fellow Syrians.

(For some background on how the Israeli side treats its Syrian enemies, see David Hornik's essay on the PJ Media website.)

We now know [see "In Syria, U.N. inspectors find ‘clear and convincing’ evidence of chemical attack", Washington Post] that the inspection report presented to the U.N. Security Council on Monday does not explicitly ascribe blame for the mass killing of Syrians by Syrians in a chemical warfare attack. But the evidence in the report, in particular the trajectory of ­the lethal rockets that delivered the chemical poison, points specifically to one of the two barbaric sides - the Syrian government - as bearing responsibility.

Smoking guns belong to Hollywood. In the real world, disputed facts are rarely resolved more clearly than what has been uncovered in Syria. Syria's political leaders who denied ever having had chemical weapons grabbed the opportunity last week to do an inventory of them and agreed for what they said they never possessed to be destroyed. We're entitled to draw conclusions.

Each of the international organizations listed below counts the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Abbas as a member according to Wikipedia  (in alphabetical order) 
Arab Bank for Economic Development in AfricaArab Fund for Economic and Social DevelopmentArab LeagueArab Monetary FundCouncil of Arab Economic UnityCustoms Cooperation CouncilEconomic and Social Commission for Western AsiaFood and Agricultural OrganizationGroup of 24Group of 77International Atomic Energy AgencyInternational Bank for Reconstruction and DevelopmentInternational Civil Aviation OrganizationInternational Chamber of CommerceInternational Development AssociationIslamic Development BankInternational Fund for Agricultural DevelopmentInternational Finance CorporationInternational Labour OrganizationInternational Monetary FundInternational Maritime OrganizationINTELSAT, INTERPOLInternational Olympic CommitteeInternational Organization for StandardizationInternational Telecommunication UnionLeague of Red Cross and Red Crescent SocietiesNon-Aligned MovementOrganization of Arab Petroleum Exporting CountriesOrganisation of Islamic CooperationUN, UN Commission on Human RightsUN Conference on Trade and DevelopmentUN Industrial Development OrganizationUN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near EastUniversal Postal UnionWorld Federation of Trade UnionsWorld Health OrganizationWorld Meteorological OrganizationWorld Tourism Organization.
Ordinary people like us, non-political figures, are wondering how many of them have taken, are now taking, or are planning to take, any steps of any sort whatsoever to express in a practical way the revulsion that a chemical massacre as an act of ultimate hostility arouses in the ranks of rational humanity.

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