Horror in Syria - What Can Be Done? - NYTimes.com Re "Kerry Cites Clear Evidence of Chemical Weapon Use" (front page, Aug. 27): There are compelling reasons to intervene in Syria's civil war. But the use of chemical weapons in last week's attack near Damascus is not one of them. If, as Secretary of State John Kerry declared, the killing of reportedly hundreds of people with toxic gas should "shock the conscience of the world," why should attacks using plain old bullets and bombs - which have killed more than 100,000 Syrians so far - be less troubling? Apparently, it is not the political fundamentals of the conflict but rather the spectacular specter of chemical weapons that may finally be rousing the West to action. This augurs poorly for what is to come. Shocked consciences tend to blind us to consequences. The writer is a doctoral candidate in international history at Columbia University. The singular policy option available to President Obama is to interdict further chemical weapon attacks upon Syrians by force of arms. Mr. Obama's admonitory "red line" demarcation has evidently been transgressed. The television footage of the dead and the dying compels action, not vacuous verbiage, not deliberative studies and not endless United Nations inquiries. Before the United States dives into another intractable intervention, we should take a small but significant step into the shark-infested Syrian waters with a major humanitarian action: We should develop regular and reliable contact with the field hospitals and provide large amounts of high-quality medical supplies to them and to the victims, both of the chemical attacks and the bombings, through airdrops into carefully pinpointed areas. We should also fly in helicopters to airlift the most life-threatened victims to either a hospital ship or to the closest hospitals in countries bordering Syria. Ambulances should also be stationed at the Israeli, Lebanese and Turkish borders to transport the seriously wounded to the closest hospitals in these countries. Priority in these evacuations should be given to children. These actions would not only save lives and demonstrate America's humanitarian concerns and its recognition of the urgent need to address them, but also serve to "test the waters" to determine if military intervention is necessary, possible and conducive to success. The coming American intervention in Syria telegraphed by Secretary of State John Kerry should not be in support of one faction or another. Rather, the United States" objective should be to secure and or destroy President Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons. Only such a clear and limited goal would command the support of the American people. This is not, nor should it be, the sole responsibility of the United States. In this age of globalization and porous economic and social borders, the time has come for the United Nations to seriously review its charter and contrive to allow its "peacekeeping forces" to act as first responders in a real and meaningful way. What happens in one country now affects not only that country and neighboring states, and the reverberations are felt worldwide. It's all very well drawing a line in the sand, but if there is no coherent response on an international level and no plan in place to deliver immediate consequences, these events will continue. The United Nations was created to find ways of avoiding and preventing situations like this. Today, it behaves more like the United States Congress, and the fact that it chooses to remain impotent in the face of very real need is a damning comment on an organization that could be doing so much more. Illegal and immoral as the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war may be, there is not universal agreement as to whether their use should be an automatic trigger to an outside military response. Not only are our old cold-war adversaries on the other side of the issue, but there are also reasonable voices within our own country calling for restraint. The president must not only wrestle with those issues but also with where our most important interests lie and how best to achieve them.