Europe Should Take Syria’s Assad to War

The photograph of a drowned 3-year-old boy washed up on a Turkish beach put the Syrian refugee crisis front and center of Europe’s immigration policy.

Sadly, Europeans still fail to internalize that a military offensive to stop Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s blood-soaked war against his civilians is the only viable remedy to stem the flow of refugees.

Kinan Masalmeh, a 13-year-old Syrian refugee in Hungary, neatly captured what Europe needs to do: “Please help the Syrians …The Syrians need help now. Just stop the war. We don’t want to stay in Europe. Just stop the war.”

Take the example of Germany and its laudable absorption of scores of Syrian refugees. Chancellor Angela Merkel has relaxed her country’s strict immigration rules. In August, Germany admitted 104,000 asylum seekers and by the end of 2015 a total of 800,000 new people are expected to reside in the country.

Yet Germany is a significant part of the refugee problem. Rewind to 2013 after Assad deployed chemical weapons to kill an estimated 1,400 civilians. The Merkel administration opposed military strikes. Assad’s forces, with the military support of Iran, have murdered over 250,000 people in Syria since the outbreak of a civil society movement calling for democracy in 2011. Syria’s regime is responsible for eight times more killings than the Islamic State.

Germany was not alone in its isolationism in 2013. The British parliament rejected military air strikes. President Obama added to the crisis by walking back his commitment to launch missiles if Assad used chemical weapons. Put simply, the barbaric Islamic State is largely an outgrowth of a failed Western policy to dissolve Syria’s regime.

While Germany initially accepted mainly Syrian Christian refugees, it has now expanded its outreach to include Muslims. It is unclear how many asylum seekers will be granted residency. After all, a German court opposed the asylum application of an Iranian lesbian because she could hide her sexual identity in Iran. Iran’s Islamic law proscribes the death penalty for homosexuals.

European politicians have remained silent on Iran’s role in forcing Syrians to flee for their lives. Iran’s rulers have provided Assad with an economic lifeline to wage war. Hezbollah — Iran’s wholly owned terrorist subsidiary — has thousands of combatants fighting to retain Assad’s regime.

Making matters worse, Europe and the U.S. are slated to release $150 billion in sanctions relief money to Iran as part of the deal to curb Tehran’s illicit nuclear weapons program. Assad will soon get a fresh economic shot in the arm.

If Germany leads, the rest of Europe will inevitably follow. Merkel can call on NATO to set up a no-fly zone and military enforced humanitarian corridors in Syria. Military strikes to knock out Assad’s helicopters, runways and fighter planes would dramatically alleviate the dire plight of Syrian civilians.

Europe has an amazing opportunity to refute the crude comment from Soviet communist dictator Joseph Stalin that one death — in this case, 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi who drowned — is always a tragedy, a million deaths is a mere statistic.

Benjamin Weinthal is a Berlin-based fellow for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow Benjamin on Twitter @BenWeinthal