“The only thing needed for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing” – Edmund Burke
Despite the fact that nearly all of Assad’s chemical weapons arsenal is now either out of Syria or unusable, the regime proliferates the terror of chemical attacks by using improvised chemical weapons, such as chlorine to kill and terrorize innocent civilians. And it appears that children are most affected as they do not yet have the idea to flee from dangers. There are also horrific, but uncorroborated, reports that children are being born with deformities to chemical attack survivors. Against the 162,000 reported deaths in the Syrian conflict thus far, a ‘few’ chemical casualties seem insignificant, but it is chemical weapons that appear to be the defining issue of the conflict thus far, and which seems to create complete and total inertia to the international community. But there is something we can do:
The Telegraph and this author traveled to the Syrian border and confirmed to the world on April 29,2014 the use of chlorine to kill civilians by the regime at Kafr Zita and Talmenes. We have launched an appeal to raise $1.5M to provide basic protective and monitoring equipment and training to allow civilians to survive these ‘not very toxic’ chlorine attacks. The monitoring equipment will warn civilians–especially children–of the attack and the need to take action. It will also allow recording of the event for evidence to bring against the perpetrators in the future. Reducing the effect of chlorine, and the knowledge that eventually those guilty will pay, may well prevent the future use of chemical weapons. It’s a strategy more likely to be effective than cruise missiles. There was allegedly another chlorine attack on Tuesday, May 20, which killed two and injured 50 – so time is of the essence.
