Commentary: Samantha Power's weak attempt to shame Bashar Assad

She's sincere in her delivery, but Samantha Power, President Barack Obama's ambassador to the United Nations, still doesn't seem to understand the Syrian regime she's speaking to. When she asked President Bashar Assad and his allies Tuesday in front of the U.N. Security Council if there was "literally nothing" that would shame them regarding the situation in Aleppo and Syria — where there are reports of women and children being executed by government forces — she should have already known there isn't.

She reiterated her question on Twitter that afternoon:

Her question is compelling to human beings who aren't trying to win a war and have shown little regard for human life. But that is not who Power is speaking truth to, and as a result, she will not, no matter how sincere her pleas, ultimately accomplish anything with her "tsk, tsk" approach.

The most frustrating part of Power's tactic is that it is indicative of the largely failed foreign policy of the last eight years, which looks strikingly similar to the liberal left's domestic policy: social Darwinism that attempts to shame people into action or placate them into appeasement.

A word of advice to Samantha Power: Assad, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani likely don't care how she feels about the people in Aleppo. No matter how sincere she is about the horrific situation there.

And it is horrific, as CNN reported Tuesday:

Thousands of civilians remain trapped amid what has been described by a UN spokesman as a "complete meltdown of humanity."

"This may be my last video. More than 50,000 civilians who rebelled against the dictator [Syrian President Bashar] al-Assad are threatened with field executions or are dying under bombing," Lina Shamy, an activist in eastern Aleppo, said in a video shared on Twitter.

It's a shame that Power's boss, as Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and John McCain (Ariz.) noted in a statement released Tuesday, couldn't stick by the red line he drew in Syria.