Silence is Sarin: United States has moral obligation to act on Syria

Throughout history, our greatest failure has not been bigotry or ignorance; our greatest failure is silence. The current civil war in Syria is testing the moral compass of the United States, much like the steady progression of the Holocaust did more than 70 years ago. The questions we must ask ourselves now are: Are we willing to let this progress to the magnitude of another mass genocide? If the window of opportunity has closed on our ability to take initial action, how do we do damage control?

To start with, we must first look at the parallels between the current approach of the United States to Syria and the development of the Holocaust. Many of the arguments that the American public used to defend its inaction in the Holocaust are the same arguments the world is using today to defend the United States’s inaction in Syria: First, Americans were concerned about Hitler’s increasing power. Today, Americans are concerned about Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s brutal attempts to suppress the populist rebellion.

Second, Americans were against entering another world war that primarily concerned major Western European powers. The sentiments are quite similar today. Considering that we just left Iraq and we’re still in Afghanistan, Americans are worried about putting more troops on the ground in another country in the Middle East. Finally, citizens argued, Germany was a sovereign nation as Syria is today and, therefore, has the right to settle its domestic conflicts internally. But this mindset has deadly consequences. 

A stark difference between the two situations, however, is our access to information and the speed at which we can receive it. In almost every mass tragedy in history, there are images to prove it in the aftermath. The images we see today of the innocent bodies in Syria lined up for burial eerily echo those we see of the victims of the Holocaust. Given Congress’s current lack of motivation, it is questionable as to how much those images are being used in the decision-making process. 

Professor Ross Harrison, a faculty member at Georgetown University and a visiting Pitt lecturer of Middle Eastern politics, said: “Your generation and social media is a huge factor here.” 

Barbara Burstin, a lecturer in Pitt’s history department who teaches a course about the United States and the Holocaust, said, “The world is far more connected now than it was in the 1930s and ’40s. Now more than ever, we cannot ignore the images and videos.”

This immediacy of information is both good and bad. Technology allows the public to verify the facts and can read and see evidence of it the moment it happens. There is no lag time in the information getting out, which, in turn, also makes the window to act close sooner.

Despite the unprecedented access to media, we’ve witnessed history repeat itself over the last few years. 

On Sept. 16, the United Nations released statements documenting test samples that confirmed what the images, testimonials and videos already have displayed: that al-Assad used one of the deadliest chemical weapons, sarin gas, to murder more than 1,400 of his own citizens.  

But according to the Washington Post-ABC news poll released on Sept. 20, 61 percent of Americans oppose any kind of military action against Syria. President Obama’s attempts to gain popular opinion and persuade Congress to approve military intervention in Syria have failed..

There is an eerie parallel here with the Holocaust. During the 1930s and ’40s, when the League of Nations visited Nazi concentration camps in Eastern Europe, there was enough evidence gathered to support a claim against the Nazis. However, the Nazis displayed less severe working and living conditions than were a reality at the time. Therefore, the League of Nations, and in turn the rest of the world, was able to turn a blind eye. This subsequently enabled Nazis to persecute innocent victims further. 

With the U.N.’s recently released report lending scientific credence to what the images, testimonials and videos have already displayed, the United States finds itself at a moral crossroads again. 

There is no question that it is difficult to emotionally invest in a situation like this. Many military officials and foreign affairs experts are harping on concrete numbers on the domestic front to point to why the United States should not act, and maybe that’s exactly the problem. When the United States can see the parallels between the situation at hand and historic mass murders, it has a moral obligation to prevent current situations from progressing to the magnitude of past state-sponsored mass murders. 

Nobody wants to put more boots on the ground. But more importantly, five years from now, nobody will want the blood of innocent civilians on their hands and guilt from inaction on their conscience.

Military officials believe that the window of opportunity for the United States to deal with al-Assad has closed. “There’s plenty of what’s morally repugnant over there. But right now we are ill-equipped to take action,” said James Williams, a retired United States military officer and current special operatives trainer. 

The question now is, if we do step in, what is going to be the result? Are we going to save lives? Are we enabling positive change in the region? Or will we continue allowing al-Assad to buy time??

This is not a political issue. This is a moral decision about the obligation we have to take action against crimes against humanity. We have seen these shrouds before. 

Write Julia at juliacarpey@gmail.com.