2020-03-02_Time_Magazine_International_Edition

Time March 2–9, 2020

His leg had been severed in an airstrike.
He’d begged them to bring it with them as
they fled, in the hope that it could somehow
be reattached.
At the time, I hoped that stories like
his might force the world’s rich and mighty
countries to intervene to stop the violence.
But now, nearly a decade later, it strikes
me as a metaphor for the Syrian conflict it-
self: the shattered innocence of a generation
of children; the irreversible damage inflicted
upon a secular, multiethnic society; and the
years of pleas for help that have
gone unanswered.
I’ve been to the Syrian region some 10 times
since the conflict began. At first, the families
I met were hopeful. They said, “Please, tell
people what is happening to us,” trusting that
once the truth was
known, the world
would come to their
rescue. But hope
curdled into anger
and the struggle
for survival: the
anger of the father
who held his baby
up to me, asking,
“Is this a terrorist?
Is my son a terror-
ist?” and the pain of
families I met who
faced daily choices
about which of their children would get scarce
food and medicine.
We’ve seen countless images of Syrian chil-
dren asphyxiated by gas, maimed by shrapnel,
drowned on the shores of Europe or—as
I write— freezing to death in the cold of Syria’s
Idlib province. None of it has been enough to
override the brutal indifference of the compet-
ing forces and interests contributing to the de-
struction of Syria.
Far from healing Syria’s wounds, the
response of some external powers has been
to inflict further injuries, bloodying their
hands in the process. Other countries have
focused on the fight against terrorism or on
the humanitarian relief effort, while the war
itself has bled ever more fiercely.
Laws prohibiting the killing of civil-
ians, the bombing of hospitals and schools,
or mass rape; treaties banning the use of
chemical attacks; the Responsibility to Pro-
tect pact, signed by U.N. member states; the
Security Council’s powers to act to stop a
conflict—the U.N. Charter itself—all lie bro-
ken, unused or misused in the Syrian conflict.

Since 2014, the U.N. has been unable to count

the dead in Syria. Some estimate that over

half a million Syrians have died.

politicians often imply that we face a

choice between open-ended military and dip-

lomatic interventions of the kind we’ve seen

in Iraq and Afghanistan, and leaving other

countries to fend for themselves, sending

whatever amount of humanitarian aid we’re

willing to supply, and sealing ourselves off.

Syria is proof that a lack of leadership and

diplomacy has consequences.

It also raises fundamental questions for us

as Americans: When did we stop wanting to

stand up for the underdog, for the innocent,

for those fighting for their human rights?

And what kind of country would we be if we

abandoned that

principle? There

is a lot of focus in

America today on

self- preservation.

But peace is almost

always fought for

hardest by those

who really under-

stand war. His-

tory shows that

when we fought

for the libera-

tion of Europe in

World War II, or

contributed to building the postwar global

order, we did so for our own interests—and

we reaped the benefits. When America was

attacked on 9/11, many countries made com-

mon cause with us because we had earned

their friendship.

We’re watching the brutal endgame of the

war in Syria as if it has little to do with us. But

it does. We should be using our diplomatic

power to insist on a cease-fire and a negoti-

ated peace based on at least some measure of

political participation, accountability and the

conditions for the safe return of refugees.

The alternative is that Syria stands as an

infamous new reference point for the brutal-

ity and destruction that it is possible to inflict

with impunity upon a civilian population—

and it will fall on the already loaded shoul-

ders of the next generation to rebuild a shat-

tered international system.

Jolie, a TIME contributing editor, is an

Academy Award–winning actor and special

envoy of the U.N. High Commissioner

for Refugees. Her views are her own

Syrian civilians flee Idlib on Feb. 13

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Silence

breaker

After Susan Fowler’s

blog post about

sexual harassment

at Uber went viral,

it seemed at first as

if people had listened

and she would walk

away unscathed. But,

she writes in her new

book Whistleblower,

“I was soon jolted

out of my daydream,

and I awakened

into a nightmare.”

Principles

of justice

After President Trump

tweeted that he has

the right to intervene in

criminal cases, former

U.S. Attorney Joyce

White Vance watched

to see what Attorney

General William Barr

would do. When he said

nothing, she called

on Barr to resign.

“Silence in the face of

so egregious a claim

signals agreement,”

she writes.

Future

of war

The 2021 White

House budget calls

for $740.5 billion for

the Department of

Defense, but according

to TIME contributor

and retired Admiral

James Stavridis, it

doesn’t go far enough

in addressing emerging

needs. “At heart, it

follows a conservative

philosophy of clinging

to what is known

and comfortable,”

he writes.

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