A great tragedy has befallen the moral consciousness of the entire world as the military forces of dictator and all-around scumbag Bashar al-Assad march into east Aleppo, riding high on Russian support and destroying any hope that the rebels will be able to hold out. Aleppo is a tragedy many years in the making, a slow-burning horror show that the international community has resigned itself to sit and watch. Efforts have been made to broker peace, deliver aid and support the rebels, but none have succeeded in countering the increasingly blatant support of the Russian government.

This lack of action exists as a symptom of the war on terror. The West’s inaction is a direct result of nation building gone awry in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The idea of direct military intervention into another Middle Eastern country is nearly unthinkable among NATO countries, especially the United States. This has created a power vacuum in the region, as the US has drawn back its forces, allowing room for countries such as Russia and Iran to take charge, destroying all hope that the West could fulfill a moral imperative to protect innocent life in Aleppo.

The West looks weak in the face of Russian aggression, but there is politically little that can actually be done directly on the ground in Syria. With direct intervention out of the question, the only response left would be supporting the rebels on the ground. Yet the Assad regime has cleverly made this a near impossibility for the US through the use of his own violence. Assad’s brutality against the rebels has taken what once was a mostly unified opposition to his rule and supplanted it with a fractured, continually radicalizing, weak coalition which he can then label as "terrorist," eliminating the possibility of Western support.

This is how scores of innocent people have been allowed to starve, how disease has been able to cripple this once great city and how countless innocent civilians have been crushed under the boot of the new Assad/Putin regime. This is all undoubtedly Russia’s fault. Before their intervention on the behalf of Assad, the regime was on the verge of collapse, but now they look stronger than ever and are executing one of the greatest humanitarian disasters in recent history.

Since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the Obama administration has moved to counter Russian aggression throughout the world by isolating them on the global stage and nearly collapsing their economy through sanctions. Yet this has not been enough, it has only strengthened Vladimir Putin’s popularity among his own people, giving him a mandate to execute these types of moral injustices around the world.

Now the Western world must sit and watch in shame as our own weakness unfolds in Aleppo. We are powerless to project any type of moral value because that power was completely expended in the war on terror, leaving us weak and broken.

The only thing left to do is help those in need the best we can. Here I have attached a website with a list of several NGO’s trying to help those affected by this crisis.