Article 7 of the Rome statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) defines “crimes against humanity” as “murder” and other “inhumane acts” committed “as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population.” It would be hard to find a clearer case of such offenses than the Syrian regime’s systematic repression of peaceful demonstrations through the past six weeks, with indiscriminate use of live ammunition against its own people on a countrywide scale. The massacre of at least 120 defenseless civilians across Syria this past weekend brought the death toll since protests began in mid-March 2011 to nearly four hundred, according to conservative estimates.

Apart from the warfare in Libya, the casualties in Syria are the highest among the Arab uprisings against autocratic regimes that began in Tunisia in December 2010. It is also plain that murder in Syria is probably on the verge of further escalation, as President Bashar Assad and his lieutenants survey world reaction and see nothing of note. The international community that brandished international justice at Muammar Gaddafi for crimes comparable to those being committed in Syria is virtually mute before Assad. Western media will not show images like that of the twelve-year-old child whose head was half shot away in a massacre of fourteen civilians in the southern Syrian town of Izra’a. If they did, President Obama might feel pressed to do just a little beyond issuing expressions of outrage.