New York Times processology on the American military intervention in northern Iraq --
Officials told Mr. Obama there was a real danger of genocide, under the legal definition of the term. “While we have faced difficult humanitarian challenges, this was in a different category,” said an official. “That kind of shakes you up, gets your attention.”
Since thousands of deaths in the Assad regime chemical attack on Damascus, not to mention the overall death toll in Syria, failed to generate this kind of shaking or attention-getting in the White House, one has to conclude that if any group of civilians is planning to be murdered in the thousands, they need to do it within driving distance of a US diplomatic facility (since the proximity to the Erbil consulate is being used as one rationale for intervention), or that the threatened group amounts to a significant percentage of the overall population.
Sorry, Sunni Arabs, you're out of luck.
Officials told Mr. Obama there was a real danger of genocide, under the legal definition of the term. “While we have faced difficult humanitarian challenges, this was in a different category,” said an official. “That kind of shakes you up, gets your attention.”
Since thousands of deaths in the Assad regime chemical attack on Damascus, not to mention the overall death toll in Syria, failed to generate this kind of shaking or attention-getting in the White House, one has to conclude that if any group of civilians is planning to be murdered in the thousands, they need to do it within driving distance of a US diplomatic facility (since the proximity to the Erbil consulate is being used as one rationale for intervention), or that the threatened group amounts to a significant percentage of the overall population.
Sorry, Sunni Arabs, you're out of luck.