Turkey fiddles, US and allies bomb, UN sleeps while brave women, children and men of Kobane fight for survival as ISIS threatens their very existence. Tukey's president Erdogan had promised it won't be allowed to happen. His Turkish tanks arrayed across the border in Turkey remain motionless as if they stand to prevent the demonstrating thousands in Turkey from crossing the border into Syria to protect Kobane. The silence from Erdogan and his tanks is deafening while ISIS murderers continue their assault on Kobane. The allied air strikes are helping but are not enough to hold ISIS forces off for ever. Kobane's men, women and children equipped with light weapons are no match for the hatred laden and heavily equipped monsters of ISIS. The moment of reckoning is upon us and our world is unable to muster the will and determination to exterminate the extremists of ISIS.
The world is increasingly a smaller place. But the gap between our pretensions and reality continues to grow. We say we care. We pledge often to never again let evil snuff innocent lives unchallenged. We pledge: Never Again. Yet it continues to happen. It happened in Rawanda. We let it happen in Eastern Europe before we took action. Yet we continue to proclaim: Never again. We can prosecute after the fact in The Hague: little consolation for the dead or for the loved ones left behind. They will never have closure. What closure? Closure may be of one or two people being tried before the International Criminal Court after the gruesome fact. But how can any closure be complete without prosecuting the silently acquiescent millions like you and me?
In the august chambers of democracy we can debate the finer points of peacekeeping and peace- making? Lester Pearson could deserve the Nobel Peace Prize when with some exceptions others made the sacrifices to create peace and we refereed the occasional infractions. Now there is no place for an umpire as the butchers' rules are pure unadulterated butchery against those who are unlike them in faith, sect within a faith, ethnicity, political or cultural orientation. Now we must get our hands dirty by getting into physically confronting the butchers. We can provide humanitarian aid to the displaced, maimed and the fleeing. But we must staunch the carnage before it engulfs an ever larger part of the globe and humanity inhabiting it. If we do not staunch it there will be no one left to bandage and be bandaged, comfort and be comforted or bestow or receive Nobels for Peace. Time is of the essence. Our resposibility to protect beckons. We must act.
