Syrian Crises: the moral tragedy of war

I have not at any time of my life lived in a war zone. The closest I have been to war was as a seven years old kid during the June 12 post-election riot in Lagos, Nigeria. I can remember watching from the balcony of our house as some soldiers rounded up a number of rioting young men and beat them to pulp. The men managed to squeeze away from the beating party with something left of their lives except one of them. When the soldiers had gone very far away from our street, we the bloody civilians gathered around the body of the young man.
As little children at that time, it was of excitement to watch it all happen. But today, each time I hear of news of war or any violence on going anywhere in the world, I think of that incidence. I think of people, and even children in that place having that experience. In the case of Syria, I think of the experience occurring a million times worse than what I had.
What we have going on in Syria right now shames humanity. The casualty figures are staggering, yet we seem to be used to it. This is what wars and news of wars do to the human mind. We hear of a war somewhere and we just expect to hear next a substantial figure of deaths and destruction following. Whatever manner of story that would have been unacceptable to our sense of morality becomes anticipated and then excusable. Wars kill our morality. It gives justification for the reach into the darkest corners of man's wicked heart.
About 250,000 lives have been lost since the start of the Syrian war in March 2011 that began as a pro-democratic protest in Deraa. Both sides of the war have been alleged by the UN Commission to have committed acts against human rights like torture, rape, cold blooded murder, abduction and civilian sufferings like denial of basic living amenities amongst other war crimes. Civilian gatherings have been deliberately targeted by both parties which several times had resulted in massacres.
In August 2013, someone or some persons took a hold of rocket launchers loaded with rockets that contain sarin, a nerve chemical weapon. Being well aware of what this chemical would do to the humans who will be in its landing area, he or she sent it on its way to land in Damascus. This was done to harm thousands of people who have not offended him or her in any way, people he or she had never met before. This is a shocking exhibition of a mind swept clean of conscience. War was the excuse.
ISIS and the religious sectarianism now thrown in the mix of the matter has added unholy complexity to a severely outrageous crises.
It isn't that Syria has become the worst of wars in the history of mankind. But the fact that we can still descend this low questions the truism in the concept of human social advancement. We would want to believe that today, we are closer today to our conscience and finer in inter-human relationships than our father's forefathers were. For instance, slavery was rational and acceptable five centuries ago, today we shun it. Why have we not reached the social and moral advancement enough to shun the dirtiness of war or at least fight it with some decency like adhering to the Geneva War Convention.
In the course of writing this, I have thought of the Holocaust, I have thought of Concentration Camps, I have thought of Biafran babies during the Nigerian Civil war and I can say that wars mocks our haughty shoulders of superiority over the beasts of the wild. Wars murder our morality.