"piles of bodies, including infants and small children..."

[oberliner]

“The increasingly brutal nature of the conflict makes international efforts to halt the bloodshed imperative,” Ms. Pillay, the high commissioner for human rights, said in a statement in Geneva. Efforts by the United States and Russia to convene an international conference on ending the two-year civil war announced this week are welcome, Ms. Pillay said, “but we need a much greater sense of urgency.”

Ms. Pillay drew attention to images of piles of bodies, including infants and small children, that purport to show the killing of dozens of civilians by pro-government militiamen in the village of Bayda and elsewhere in the Baniyas area this month. She said she believed that war crimes and crimes against humanity had been committed.

She also warned that a buildup of government forces and militia troops in the western Qusayr area near the border with Lebanon appeared to presage a government offensive and that residents were fleeing. “We’re worried, too,” said Rupert Colville, a spokesman for Ms. Pillay. “These kind of killings have not been a one-off; they’ve been repeated very savagely.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/11/world/middleeast/syria-human-rights.html?_r=0

[Comrade Grumpy]

1. I'm all for stopping the bloodshed. I just don't think sending tons of arms to the rebels...

...is the way to do it.

Civil wars end with the utter defeat of one side (Sri Lanka) or a negotiated settlement (El Salvador). Barring large-scale foreign military intervention, including "boots on the ground," Assad will not be defeated. The Russians and the Americans are working on starting peace talks, but the American position is untenable. It demands as a precondition to the negotiations that which must be negotiated: the departure of Assad.

There's an interesting theory in political science circles these days that postulates that civil wars start not when grievances mount or go unheard, but when someone pays for them. The Syrian protest movement morphed into a civil war when those friends of democracy, the Saudis and the Gulf sheiks, began paying for it. They, too, have plenty of Syrian blood on their hands.

[HiPointDem]

2. +1.

[oberliner]

3. The UN Human Rights director is certainly not suggesting that

The international community ignoring the situation is what she seems to be worried about.