Brutality can win civil wars--assuming you can pay the price for turning your people into brutalizers. Hunger is just one way to brutalize:
In Syria food has become a major weapon for both sides. Because of that the UN and other NGOs (Non-governmental organizations) are finding it more difficult to get food and other supplies into Syria and then to the people who most desperately need it. Currently about 40 percent of the population are either refugees or in areas where food and medical care is not available on a regular basis. The UN has identified four million people as being in desperate need and over half a million of those people are completely cut off from aid, or anything from the government.
Obviously, the weapon is more useful to Assad's forces. With fewer people and more resources, Assad is the one using the food weapon more effectively.
Remember, Assad didn't promise to stop killing--just to stop killing with chemical weapons. This was called "smart" diplomacy.
We need to get the UN Security Council to approve a resolution to alleviate hunger in Syria--on both sides. If Russia vetoes the resolution, so much the better. Declare we will send aid anyway and enjoy seeing Russia squirm over defending starvation as a weapon.
We should push food into Syria across the land borders and drop food to those people in the areas completely cut off from aid. With access to air bases in Turkey and Jordan, there's no reason we can't do this.
Escort the transport planes and insist that Syria keep their aircraft and helicopters grounded while we carry out the humanitarian missions.
I have no idea how much airlift we could allocate nor do I know how many people we could effectively feed by air drop.
But the morale effect of seeing NATO aircraft in the air dropping food rather than Syrian craft dropping barrel bombs would be significant.
An army marches on its stomach no more so than a rebellion. If the best we can do is become the pantry of the rebellion rather than the armory, we should at least do that.
And give the rebels hope. A rebellion needs that, too.
It's for the children, after all.
UPDATE: I'd arm the rebels, too, as I've written before. But that seems to be out of the question.
Kerry and his boss handed us foreign policy lemons and I'm just trying to make lemonade to get something out of this ridiculous diplomacy we've embarked on.
