250,000 Syrians dead, 7 million displaced
Michael Ignatieff inWashington Post: As Russian planes decimate Aleppo, and hundreds of thousands of civilians in Syria’s largest city prepare for encirclement, blockade and siege — and for the starvation and the barbarity that will inevitably follow — it is time to proclaim the moral bankruptcy of American and Western policy in Syria.
Actually, it is past time. The moral bankruptcy has been long in the making: five years of empty declarations that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must go, of halfhearted arming of rebel groups, of allowing the red line on chemical weapons to be crossed and of failing adequately to share Europe’s refugee burden as it buckles under the strain of the consequences of Western inaction. In the meantime, a quarter-million Syrians have died, 7 million have been displaced and nearly 5 million are refugees. Two million of the refugees are children.
Note: The refugee family landing in Halifax Sunday and settling in Shelburne, Nova Scotia is from the embattled city of Aleppo
SEE IGNATIEFF INTERVIEW ON CTV: http://www.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=808472