I've said this on this forum many times, but it was a dangerous and frankly disgraceful decision to not intervene in Syria all these years. Syria has over 250,000 people dead, most of them civilians. Its infrastructure is destroyed, landmarks and monuments defied and damaged, millions of internally displaced, and millions pouring out looking for refuge. This scale of human misery cannot be abided by. We have a regime that used chemical weapons against its own people in its own capital city and the world did nothing. We have an organisation that routinely tortures and publically executes innocent people, all while enforcing one of the most oppressive regimes in history on unsuspecting people in two countries, with zero decisive action by the international community.
I get it, the West was burnt by the Iraq experience, but that war cannot now be used as an excuse to never act even in the face of untold suffering. The chaos of Syria is now, predictably, spilling into neighbouring countries and into Europe, in the shape of refugees and terrorism. After the Russian intervention, it will be very hard to take decisive action in Syria because the Russians would insist on keeping their puppet Assad. However that is a complete non-starter as Assad bears the brunt of responsibility for the situation in his country, his regime will never be legitimate again.
Really tragic situation all around. Not acting can have consequences that are as or even more dangerous than acting. The vacuum in Syria was filled by the worst the world has to offer, and now innocents around the world are suffering.
