Carnage in Syria - Disunity facilitates savagery

Every few decades, almost unfathomable savagery breaks out in some part of the world and reminds us all of the darkness that lurks, and will probably lurk forever, at the heart of humanity.

Nationalism, religion, imperialism, fear, or, most usually, an irrational hatred of the other, are the default driving forces.

A determination to resist change, to preserve the status quo and the privileges it confers, has often been at the root of brutal oppression. Determined campaigns to remove such regimes filled cemeteries too. As our history vividly records, we are not immune to such motivations or entirely innocent of dreadful atrocities.