I have been reading here how the non-intervention policy of the UN was right, how and why it didn't do as it did in Lybya and activly assist the rebels, why it was right for British politicians to say, as they did, that it would be wrong to intervene for fear of what would rplace the Assad regime - why it was permissable to sell small arms ammunition to a regime which had a record of torture and murder (fully reported by Amnesty International).
I wait with bated breath to learn why the world should continue to stand by and watch what is happening in Syria as if it were a Quentin Tarrantino movie.
Leader in this morning's Times
Jim Carroll

RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT
THE ASSAD REGIME BELIEVES THAT IT CAN MURDER WITH IMPUNITY. THE TIME HAS NOW COME TO ACT AND SHOW IT THAT IT IS WRONG
It may be that no one in the presidential pal¬ace in Damascus actually gave the order that pro-regime militiamen should follow up an artillery barrage of a civilian area of the town of Houla with a massacre of child¬ren. They may not have specified the number to be shot in the head, or to have their throats slit, or whether all or some should first be bound. Per¬haps senior officials only demanded a "clean-up" operation, leaving the exact details of the opera¬tion to the initiative of the Shabiha commanders. Those specifics come into clearer and more horrible focus with every hour. Much of the photo¬graphic evidence of what took place is too harrowing to publish. It shows the bodies of young children, some who would never have known what it .was to speak or walk, lying in rows on the floor of a makeshift morgue. The vast majority of these pictures—photographs of toddlers who have suf¬fered gunshots to the head — this newspaper has chosen not to print, out of concern for its readers. But equally out of a duty to inform its readers it has taken the decision that some, at least, of these pictures must be seen.
Those civilians in the village of Taldou who survived by dint of hiding or pretending to be dead are united in their accounts — that the killings were carried out by the Shabiha militia. More than 100 people, 49 of them children, were murdered, as though formally executed, in an act that paral¬lels the worst atrocities of Bosnia or Rwanda; and in a country subject to a diplomatic process involving the United Nations and in an area acces¬sible to observers working for the United Nations. "Never again" has happened again.
There are definitions of what constitutes a war crime and a crime against humanity. If these crimes do not satisfy them, the terms are empty. Since protests against his autocracy began 15 months ago, President Assad has made gestures of reform that stand exposed as less even than cos¬metic — as bad jokes. His overriding policy is to eradicate rather than defuse dissent. His principal method is artillery and tank shelling of town after town and village after village—not fortified areas but houses and even field hospitals. His campaign i of barbarism has now extended to crimes that are a class apart even from this.
The regime must have known that its decision to obliterate rather than deal with opposition would produce massacres like Houla. And it isn't difficult to understand what it has been telling itself. Go for it. Kill them, if necessary.
The West, Mr Assad's courtiers will have advised him, lacks any practical appetite to interfere in your war on your own people. Scarred by Iraq, embroiled in Afghanistan, facing elections in America and a continuing economic crisis, it is most unlikely that Western nations will seek another entanglement. The Syrian regime will have calculated that, unlike with Gaddafi's Libya, its government still enjoys the support of one major power — Russia — whose weight will be thrown in the balance against any international intervention. So (Mr Assad's advisers will tell him), smile, say the words, greet Kofi with one hand and with the other destroy the opposition using whatever force is necessary.
The world will express horror at the pictures, sigh a great sigh at the inhumanity of man to man, regret the complexity of the situation in this tinderbox of a region, and then move on. Syria's men abroad will have reported back the broadcast misgivings of former diplomats in Britain and elsewhere that anything useful can be done at all.
There are many things said and written about the legality of intervention in foreign countries. But there has also been, in recent years, a burgeoning if incomplete recognition of what is called the "responsibility to protect". This partly refers to a government's responsibility to keep its citizens from harm, but it also applies to the duty of the international community to make sure that this happens. Put bluntly, the question asks itself in this way: how much more murder has to happen before we feel obliged to take action to stop it?
Houla is the tipping point in Syria. There should be no further period of inaction, of standing by and watching murder and mayhem inflicted on innocents. The Syrian regime has declared •war on the Syrian people, a people we should regard as allies. It is clear, not least from the disgusting apologetics of its foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, that Russia, the country many have hoped would act as an interlocutor with the Assad regime, is actually part of the problem and not the solution. Russia, it seems, wants to hold on to its ally at all costs, especially if those costs are being borne by expendable Syrian children. It is now as relevant for demonstrators to gather outside the Russian Embassy as to protest outside that of Syria. We say this in a spirit of sadness, rather than belligerence. We had desired so much more.
So what can Britain and some of the other friends of Syria actually accomplish? Id the first instance we must try to alter rdadically the balance of calculation being made in Damascus. Singly, or with the help of powers such as Turkey, or in a wider alli¬ance Britain should seek to take active measures , to isolate and discomfort the regime and, more importantly, to protect civilians. The British Government should take the most stringent action it can to cause economic pain to Mr Assad, his family (including those living in this country) and his officials, including the seizure of assets.
It should investigate, without delay, the practicability of establishing safe havens on the border of Syria, Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, where civilians and opponents of the regime will be guarateed protection from regime forces. These safe havens may require commitment of troops, artillery and air defences. The use of drones for surveillance over civilian areas should be examined. And if necessary the arming of rebels to enable them to resist the regime forces and to protect their own people should be contemplated, and soon.
This newspaper is as wary as anyone in Britain of becoming once again involved in foreign strug¬gles. The country is weary of years of doing so much of the world's military heavy lifting and is anything but flush with public cash. So this is not the way we hoped it would work out. We wanted and argued to give peace a chance, even as it became clear that the Syrian regime had little inter¬est in reform. And it would be possible to look the other way. But what kind of country would Britain be, and what kind of people would young Syrians take us for, if we allowed the slaughter to continue? President Assad should know that the period of "do nothing" is over.