America’s retreat and the agony of Aleppo

Roger Cohen in his article in The New York Times compares between Sarajevo and Aleppo and writes that Sarajevo was headline news through much of its 44-month encirclement. NATO planes patrolled the skies to prevent aerial bombardment of the population. UN forces were deployed in a flawed relief effort. American intervention, although belated, worked.

As for Aleppo, Cohen explains, it lacks such urgency. It’s bombarded: What else is new? How often does the word “Aleppo” fall from Obama’s lips? At which dinner parties is it discussed? Which Western journalists are able to be there to chronicle day after day their outrage at a city’s dismemberment?

The writer points out that Aleppo is alone, alone beneath the bombs of Russian and Assad jets, alone to face the violent whims of Putin and Assad.

American power has lost credibility in the past two decades and Syria has been Obama’s worst mistake, a disaster that cannot provoke any trace of pride; and within that overall blunder the worst error was the last-minute “red line” wobble that undermined America’s word, emboldened Putin and empowered Assad, the writer asserts.

The dictator Assad will slaughter many more children. The international system undergirding global peace will become weaker.

Cohen concludes that no outcome in Syria could be worse than the current one. Assad’s bomb-spewing jets and his airfields should have been taken out early in the war, before ISIS. The red line should have stood. The consequences for the European allies of Obama’s let-Syria-fester policy have been overwhelming.

Desperate people in Aleppo still beautify streets with flowers to assert life over death. The flower-seller is dead, his son’s terrible anguish that of a whole city.

Aleppo, symbol of failure, symbol of indifference, symbol of American retreat, should not have been left to bleed.