Imagine if the USA Tried This

Here is a small part of a dispatch and analysis about the fighting today in Syria:

The [Assad] regime, meanwhile, appears to be following a dual strategy. While maintaining a fortress-like hold on the capital, and still seeking to reconquer urban centers held by the rebels, the regime is also carving out an Alawite enclave in the northwest of the country.

Non-Alawites are being expelled from the designated area. This area will form a safe zone and “baseline” for the regime, Assad hopes, in the event of a long, protracted war.


Let's make this clear: the strategy followed by Assad includes setting aside a portion of the country exclusively for members of his own religious sect. It is the equivalent of the Obama administration using force to remove all evangelical Christians from the states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana. It is also the same as if the Israelis forcibly removed all Palestinians from half of the West Bank. It is ethnic cleansing without actually killing all of those removed. In short, it is a major war crime.

So here is the big question. Have you heard anyone condemning these actions by Assad? Are there protests against this ethnic cleansing coming from the usual groups that march on issues like this one? Of course, the answer is that there is only silence. Where are the marchers? Where is the hysteria at the United Nations about this ethnic cleansing? Why is the media so silent? Why is president Obama so silent?

It is a disgrace to see how little response there has been to this travesty. Even worse, however, to me is to consider what would have happened if America had used a strategy like this in Afghanistan or Iraq.