The Great Syrian Trauma

Peter Harling, Synaps
Our massive moral failure has been a source of public embarrassment and personal unease for many officials involved in the conflict's management. Gradually they have been gravitating toward a solution to their own psychological tension: “stopping the violence” to appease themselves, even at the expense of diminishing any prospect of closure for Syrians. Such self-centeredness has become, in itself, an obstacle to any progress: all the policy talk about “what can we do” will remain empty until its meaning becomes “what can we do for millions of Syrians” and not “what can we do to...