“It is one of those little ironies that the one thing people are worried about the West doing over Syria, is the one thing that it isn’t doing at all. We are not ‘arming the rebels’ and in any sense that we would be likely to arm them, it wouldn’t make much difference even if we did.

This ‘dramatically escalating humanitarian crisis’ (David Cameron’s words yesterday) owes none of its escalation to us. Russian-trained pilots fly Russian-made jets to fire Russian missiles at Syrian rebels (or, at any rate, in their general direction), and the foreign boots on the ground belong to Hezbollah. Into the vacuum created by the international community’s unwillingness to act have stepped regional players with their own agendas. Where once Syrian democrats might have prevailed, private money from the Gulf has armed Sunni militants.

Estimates of deaths are notoriously unreliable, but let’s say many tens of thousands — mostly civilians — have died in the last two years and at this rate many more will die. We’ll probably watch them perish till we get bored. Maybe we’re bored already. Ancient cities have been destroyed, perhaps as many as six million people have been displaced and there are something like two million refugees outside Syria. So far.”

Read more…