Gross: UN Silent on Syrian Crackdown

Tom Gross writes:

The Obama administration official quoted by The New Yorker last week saying the president's strategy was to "lead from behind," also said "We were still trying to engage the Iranian government and we did not want to do anything that made us side with the protesters."

Now in Syria, President Assad, the man who Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and John Kerry as well as  European leaders all deluded themselves into thinking was a reformer, is using tanks to fire on unarmed Syrian civilians. Among those shot dead there on Friday were at least 16 people (including women and children) carrying olive branches. And Bashar Assad has ordered Syrian soldiers who refuse to fire on civilians to be shot, according to Al-Jazeera and the BBC. (Several have already been summarily executed for refusing to obey orders.)

Compare Obama's lame reaction against Assad with Egypt. Assad, in case anyone needs reminding, is an enemy of the U.S., and has a human rights record far worse than Egypt's. It took just six days of protests for Obama to urge former Egyptian leader and longtime U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak to begin a transition from power "now". But almost two months after he began slaughtering his own people, there has been no such call by Obama on Assad to go.

Even The New York Times has finally realized that the West's cozying up to Assad will do no good. In a lead editorial last Thursday, the Times wrote: "Even after the violence began, Mr. Obama and his aides kept quietly nudging in hopes that Mr. Assad would make the right choice. In retrospect, that looks naïve." (It is only "in restropect" to The New York Times, of course.)

And while the Syrian army again used ground troops backed by helicopter gunships, tanks and snipers to attack the Omari mosque in the city of Dara'a on Saturday, the UN Security Council hasn't even been able to muster a press statement condemning the regime. ...

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