Massacre Near Homs Puts Pressure on US Role in Syria

The UN Security Council held an emergency meeting yesterday afternoon to discuss a massacre that took place over the weekend in the Syrian town of Houla.
The Syrian government insists that its tanks and artillery were not responsible for attacks that killed at least 90 villagers — including 32 children — in a rebel-controlled village near the city of Homs. But monitors who visited the village after the attacks said they found spent tank shells, evidence that the Syrian military fired on civilians.
President Obama has said he will push for the departure of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad under a model proposed after Yemen’s transition. In an election year, however, the question of what steps the U.S. should take in Syria is becoming an increasingly political one. Over the weekend, Senator John McCain criticized the Obama administration sharply on Fox News. “Horrible things are happening in Syria,” he said. “This administration has a feckless foreign policy which abandons American leadership.”
Amr Al Azm, member of the Syrian opposition and professor of history and anthropology at Shawnee State University and Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, react to the latest news from Syria.