The virtue of restraint

As Britain prepares for a week of peaceful celebration, Syria will be bracing itself for more bloodshed. The Assad regime, perhaps emboldened by the knowledge that the west has no appetite to intervene in Syria, is becoming ever more brutal in its repression. The massacre in villages around Houla, where 108 were slain, most of them women and children, has shocked the world. The images of tiny bodies being prepared for burial pose an uncomfortable question for Britain. Is David Cameron prepared to intervene to stop the bloodshed as he did in Libya?

For more than a year now, the West has mulled over its options. During that time Assad’s soldiers have killed more than 10,000 Syrians, and 20,000 are now in exile. The death toll and the accelerating exodus is focusing minds in Turkey. The Turkish government has now prepared a plan (backed by France) to create humanitarian corridors through which civilians can escape.