Why the Refugees are Running

Listening to the BBC news on the radio in the morning on my way to work is getting kind of dangerous.  You hear about things like this and it pretty much sours the rest of the morning, if not the day.  What particularly grabbed my attention this morning was an interview with one of the men in Madaya, whose family had just received an aid shipment of rice, beans and noodles.  The reporter asked him, "how much of the aid ends up in the hands of the men with guns?"  The man said something like, "There aren't that many rebels or armed people in this town, if they want to fight they go into the countryside.  We're all civilians here starving."
To tell you the truth, that kind of shook up my understanding of these towns being "under siege."  See to me, being under siege is something that happens when one military force is trying to root out another military force from a town or a stronghold.  I don't doubt that sieges of this sort are brutal, terrible things, one of the many frightful incidents of collateral damage that disqualify most modern warfare from being regarded as a "just war."  But this idea that government troops are simply sequestering entire civilian populations and depriving them of food and freedom of movement, basically creating concentration camps, and there are few if any actual combatants in these towns, and that's pretty obviously against international law and also against the basic law of humanity.
When Hitler was running Auschwitz and Birkenau, the common excuse was that no one knew what was happening (I personally don't buy it).  Well, we know what is happening here, we have pictures:

I can't help but notice that those kids look pretty much the same as the kids in my kid's schools.  What are they doing? Making bandages out of old bed sheets, because the town they live in has run out of medical supplies.  Those boys should be playing soccer and learning to read, but they're probably going to bed hungry and wondering if they're ever going to get to live a normal life.
Forget all religious questions of ethics and political perspectives: we are failing at humanity.
And no, before you even say it, bombs and Navy Seals are not the answer, that is just going to produce a more horrific picture of children with bandages.
This is the world we have made for ourselves in our greed and our self interest.
This is the inheritance we give to our children if they live long enough.
A world where we see these pictures and do nothing.

The good news, I suppose, is that the trucks of food and medicine have gotten through to Madaya and other places.  The bad news is that those trucks are going to be empty all too soon, and it is uncertain whether the insanity of violent men will let more through.
It's times like this that I am ashamed to be a grown up.