Courage and Compassion: America, the Middle East, and the "Vicissitudes of War and Massacre"

In 1918 Americans vowed to use their resources to defend defenseless civilians in Middle Eastern countries being persecuted as a result of vicious and hostile armies of occupation in the Great War. Now in 2014, Americans are asked if they will respond to a similar tragedy…
 

Starving People Are Forced to Eat Grass
New York, May 18. The Hartford Herald. (Hartford, Ky.), 24 May 1916.

"Suffering among Armenians in Turkey, Persia and Syria is still Intense and they are dying by hundreds for want of food, and are In urgent need of aid, says a cablegram from Constantinople made public by the American committee for Armenian and Syrian relief…"

"The request for aid, sent by representatives of the committee… Conditions in many quarters, says the message, are so distressing that the Armenians are forced to eat grass; and yet despite these conditions they continue to stick fast to their Christian faith, although a change to Mohammedanism would quickly relieve their plight…"

"The number of non-combatants affected is one million. In making an appeal for aid the committee says it now has reliable facilities for feeding the needy through American consuls and missionaries…"

The American Committee for Relief in the Near East, established in 1915, by business tycoon Cleveland H. Dodge (Dodge-Phelps) and President Woodrow Wilson, the Committee provided the framework to deliver emergency aid to hundreds of thousands of people President Wilson called "homeless sufferers, whom the vicissitudes of war and massacre had brought to extremest needs."
 They gave American citizens,  business, and social organizations the opportunity to do something at which they excelled: give of their money and energy.  The volunteers helped build orphanages, schools, food distribution centers. 

Now, in 2014, the U.S. is being asked to help rescue thousands of displaced, terrorized, and starving Yazidi—trapped in the Sinjar mountains of Iraq—victims of another vicious occupation by the Islamic State (formally known as the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq or ISIS). Sustained humanitarian aid—after parachuting in some food and dropping a few bombs from drones on August 8—is probably not going to continue in the tradition of the the American Committee for Relief in the Near East, however. The U.S.announced on August 14 that it's done enough for the Yazidi and besides, government officials said, there weren't that many Yazidi hiding in the Mountains anyway.

 On the 16th, IS slaughtered 700 people in Syria. Today they posted a video of a beheading of an American journalist. As more innocent people perish by the hand of an evil occupier, we could merely say, the more things change, the more they stay the same… and let the suffering continue or we could respond with the courage, compassion, and determination of the American Committee for Relief in the Near East all those years ago. What exactly to do is perplexing. Doing nothing is unforgivable.