Photo by Debra Sweet | CC BY 2.0
The travesty of war in Syria represents a defining political issue today. The Pew Research Center estimates that by 2016, as many as six in ten Syrians were displaced from their homes due to the civil war between Syrian and Russian government forces and rebel groups (Connor and Krostad, 10/5/16). This represents an astounding 12.5 million people. Estimates vary, but when taken in total suggest that deaths from the conflict are in the hundreds of thousands, perhaps as large as half a million (Barnard, 10/11/16).
But a serious problem that’s emerged is the willful ignorance exhibited by the defenders of the U.S., Russian, and Syrian governments, which is driven largely by political considerations, rather than human rights concerns. On one side, U.S. political officials and pundits eagerly condemn the Russian and Syrian governments for human rights atrocities, but they focus only on heinous crimes committed by officially designated enemies of state. These officials and the journalists who enable them downplay the United States’ own role in funding and arming of radical Islamist groups that have destabilized Syria and are responsible for countless deaths.
On the other side, the Putin and Assad governments have no interest in acknowledging their own atrocities, and make numerous attempts to woo naïve western bloggers, celebrities, and other willing dupes in terms of attributing the responsibility for war deaths exclusively at the feet…