Responsibility To Protect? -- Micah Zenko, National Security/Foreign Policy
Why none of the plans for intervening in Syria actually tries to save civilians.
During his opening statement before last week's House Armed Services Committee hearing on Syria, ranking member Rep. Adam Smith described the "civil war in which Assad has killed somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand of his own civilians." Versions of Smith's misleading characterization are repeated often by policymakers. As Sen. John McCain has often proclaimed, and repeated last week, "The fact is Bashar Assad has massacred 100,000 people."
That the security forces under Assad's authority have perpetrated war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the use of chemical weapons, is beyond doubt. And as the head of state, he has effective control over his subordinate forces and must be held accountable before the International Criminal Court or a post-conflict special tribunal for Syria. However, most of the reported deaths in Syria have not been committed by those forces under his command.
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My Comment: If true .... these numbers are a big surprise. It also tells me that the Syrian military cannot sustain itself if this civil war continues.
Update: Syrian President Assad mentioned in A FOX interview today that 15,000 Syrian soldiers have been killed since the beginning of the civil war .... not 27,645 that are listed in the above report.
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