Article content continued

It is not too late for a no-fly zone and humanitarian corridors inside Syria. It is not too late to clear the Syrian skies of Assad’s civilian-slaying barrel bombers. It is never too late, ever, to stop the mass slaughter of innocent human beings. Already, key NATO members have been champing at the bit for one, in various forms, almost to the point of counselling a NATO mutiny against Obama. The Turks are ready for a limited zone around Aleppo and are willing to employ their fighter jets to enforce and patrol it. The British and the French are more than open to the idea of a no-fly zone, and have said so.

It is not too late for Canada to stand up and champion the cause of a no-fly zone.

It would all be very nice if Canada occupied that seat on the UN Security Council that we’re all constantly hectored to believe was lost to us owing to Harper’s Israel-friendly stridency, but the UN Security Council is broken. Russia has used its veto four times now, blocking resolutions aimed at curbing Assad’s mass slaughter. Where Russia has allowed resolutions to pass — on Assad’s resort to chemical weapons and against his indiscriminate slaughter of civilians — Assad has been allowed to get away with defying the UN Security Council, dozens and dozens of times.

Even the UN’s vast network of agencies devoted to the care and feeding of shell-shocked refugees is broken. The UNHCR’s Guterres says so himself: “The situation is beyond irreparable.”

Among those who have lent their voices to the call for a no-fly zone in one form or another, in defiance of Obama’s pathetically swollen-headed stubbornness, are former secretary of state Hilary Clinton, Obama’s resigned senior adviser on Syria, Frederic Hof, Obama’s former ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford (he resigned in disgust, too), Bill Clinton’s former ambassador to Syria, Ryan Crocker, Obama’s just-resigned anti-ISIL coalition leader, General John Alan, to say nothing of the Syrian National Council, the Syrian Coalition of Revolutionary, opposition forces and roughly 100 Syrian non-combatant organizations.

Even the otherwise anti-interventionist Syrian expert Joshua Landis says so. Yes, there will be risks. “The price of avoiding these risks is seeing the Assad regime and ISIL as essentially the only parties left standing in Syria.” You think we have a “refugee problem” now? “Once people see that refugees are going to be taken in by the West, they’re going to stampede. This problem is going to metastasize.”

Canada can lead this. Ordinary Canadians, who have shown their mettle so well these past three weeks, could force this back onto the election campaign agenda.

It’s up to us now.