When brave and innocent people are being indiscriminately killed by a ruthless dictator's military crackdowns happening throughout the country and the world stands idly, one must ask, is it time to come to their aid?
In Damascus, Syria citizens are saying, "What would it take to move the world to intervene? There are crimes against humanity currently being committed in Hama and Arab and foreign countries are still watching and awaiting what might happen next."
Meanwhile Bashir Assad continues to brutally suppress demonstrations by the Syrian people who defiantly brave live fire, even as scores are killed, while people "chant" for the fall of his regime.
What are happening in Syria are clearly crimes against humanity. Whatever legitimacy the Assad regime had retained has been exhausted with his terror campaign against the Syrian people.
Let's not mince words as to what he is doing; it is genocide; something clearly stated as unacceptable in the U.N. Charter. It is not some sanitized "collateral damage", that misnomer used when innocent people are killed as a result of some military action.
Where is the line in the sand that the U.N., the Arab League and people of conscience demand Assad's crackdown against the Syrian people end or intervention will result?
The Syrian people up to this point have been on their own as the world meekly watches and dithers.
Syria is not Egypt or Tunisia with the armies of these countries made of conscripts of the people.
Assad's army and security forces are made up mostly of Alawites like himself, a minority Shiite sect while the majority of Syrian people are Sunni. This sectarian divide contributes significantly to Assad's brutality against a majority he and his forces have little connection.
Though there have been some minor military defections, even the gunning down of those men who refuse to fire against demonstrators, there seems little likelihood of Syrian generals turning against Assad.
So though the Syrian rebellion is indigenous to the people and connects with the people's rebellion in other Arab countries against their own authoritarian regimes, it is uniquely Syrian.
There are those who believe any outside interference into a country's internal civil affairs is unjustified and illegal and is merely a cloak for imperialist designs.
To this observer, one doubts the Syrian people would look at outside intervention by the world against the Assad regime and his removal as the latest form of colonialism. They would embrace it.