By Yasmine El-Sabawi
WASHINGTON, Aug 22 (KUNA) -- Some 426 yellow paper coffins were laid out in front of the White House on Wednesday, as members of the largest Syrian-American organization in the United States gathered to remember the victims of the sarin gas attack in Ghouta, Syria, one year ago.
Every coffin represented a child that was killed on August 21, 2013, when President Bashar Al-Assad is said to have used chemical weapons on his own people, thereby crossing the Obama Administration's "red-line," and launching the case for US intervention in what had become - and still remains - a full-blown civil war.
Aroun d 1,429 people died that day. Their names were also unraveled in front of the White House on a long, red list symbolizing that "red-line" that could have been the catalyst toward US airstrikes, something the Syrian opposition lobbied hard for on Capitol Hill last year.
But more than three and a half years since the country's uprising, supporters of the moderate opposition and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) are asking why President Barack Obama has yet to take decisive military action in Syria.
Kenan Rahmani, Director of Operations and Development for the Syrian-American Council (SAC), who organized Wednesday's memorial, said Obama has failed the Syrian people.
This was the "most horrific use of chemical weapons since Halabja," he said, referring to former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's gassing of the Kurdish stronghold in 1988.
"The use of chemical weapons should not go unpunished; the killing of innocent civilians should not go unpunished," he added. Yet the Assad regime "is able to act with complete impunity" due to Washington's inaction.
While the US has provided the FSA with satellite and intelligence capabilities, it has yet to provide them with heavy weaponry such as anti-aircraft missiles for fear they could fall into the wrong hands, the Department of State said earlier this week.
Those wrong hands include the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), an extremist militant group fighting the FSA for an independent state of its own. White House officials have described the group as militarily "proficient" and "sophisticated." "They're both two sides of the same coin," Rahmani said of Assad and ISIL. "It's all terrorism," he insisted. "Assad is the reason ISIL exists in the first place ... [he] allowed them to flourish." If ISIL's brutal tactics - such as amputations and executions - compelled Obama to conduct airstrikes in Iraq, why not Syria, he asked.
"The Syrian rebels have proven themselves over the past three years, that they deserve to be supported, just like Obama is supporting the Peshmerga" in Iraq, stressed Rahmani. "The Obama Administration has shown that it does not have a 'red line' when it comes to intervening in Iraq to save the Yezidis from potential genocide." ISIL "has been killing over 7,000 Syrians since the beginning of the year," he explained. "Those potential genocides go unmentioned by the Obama administration." Marie Harf, Deputy Spokesperson for the US Department of State, spoke Wednesday of the "need to hold the Assad regime accountable" for the use of sarin gas, but did not indicate how this would unfold.
"The United States remains steadfast in our resolve to continue working with key allies and partners to do so," she said.
Earlier this week, a US military vessel in the Mediterranean completed the "neutralization" and disposal of Syria's "deadliest" chemical weapons, following a deal brokered with the help of Syrian-ally Russia last year.
But Rahmani said this only treats "the symptoms of the problem, and not the actual problem," which is Assad and ISIL's slaughter of civilians.
He urged the Obama Administration to take immediate steps to both arm the moderate opposition's fighters, and invoke the might of the US military.
"The same action taken in Iraq to protect the Yezidis should be taken in Syria," he said. "There should be a more universal morality that governs the way the US acts." According to the UN, at least 191,000 Syrians have been killed since pro-reform protests began in March 2011. (end) ys.tg