How can we justify doing nothing

I wish someone would explain to me how our government can watch, day after day, as Syrian children are killed and maimed, their houses strafed and bombs being dropped in the middle of densely populated neighborhoods. [“Iran vows to back Assad in Syria,” News, Aug. 8.]

Any of us who have had children knows the sheer terror these little kids must feel and the helplessness of their parents to protect them.

You say we shouldn’t interfere in the internal affairs of another country? Nonsense. We do it all the time, especially when our interests are served. If we have the ability to intervene and stop the suffering of others, we have a moral imperative to do so. Apparently, we, as a nation, just don’t care enough.

Daily, Syrian President Bashar Assad is having his army destroy entire neighborhoods. Just try to imagine this happening in your community, hearing the bombs drop all day and night, knowing you may be next and watching your children sob and scream in terror. To sit by and essentially do nothing to help the people of Syria is nothing short of complicity, in my view.

Yes, we have our own problems here in the United States, but none of them compares with the daily obliteration of whole families by a madman dictator who now knows that no one, apparently, is going to stop him.

By the time Assad is overthrown, thousands of little kids will have been maimed and killed. How will we, as the “great” nation we claim to be, justify our doing nothing to protect them?

— Christine Jacobson, Kent