Obama’s Atrocities Board Keeps Low Profile on Syria Crisis
When President Barack Obama used the Holocaust Memorial Museum as a backdrop to unveil a new advisory panel as an early warning system for human rights crises around the world, the announcement seemed well-timed for the unfolding conflict in Syria.
But six weeks later and just days after a massacre of civilians in Syria, there is little sign that Obama’s Atrocities Prevention Board is making a mark on U.S. efforts to craft a response amid international outrage over the mounting carnage.
Although the board is only in its early stages and is still hailed by rights advocates as a valuable new weapon against state-sponsored violence, its low profile on Syria underscores the limits of Obama’s options in confronting new humanitarian crises as they arise.
More than a year after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad launched a brutal crackdown on the opposition, Obama has made clear he has no appetite for launching a new large-scale military engagement in a U.S. election year, preferring instead to rely on diplomatic and economic pressure on Damascus.
Obama’s more passive approach on Syria stands in sharp contrast to his decision to join a NATO air assault in Libya last year. That was justified largely on humanitarian grounds of averting a threatened massacre of civilians in rebel areas.
It is an awkward position for a president who has touted his human rights focus, and some critics have suggested Syria could even turn into Obama’s Bosnia - a reference to former President Bill Clinton’s initially slow response to the Balkans conflict in the 1990s.
“Inaction on Syria is going to look bad” in historical terms, said Winny Chen, head of the crimes against humanity division of Human Rights First. But rights groups themselves have yet to forge a consensus on whether intervention or arming the rebels would help or just make matters worse in Syria.