This morning the Turkish military has crossed into Syria. The images are coming in of tanks crossing the border, and the Turkish government has said it wants to 'completely cleanse the Islamic State' from that border region.

The Turks have blamed ISIS for bombing a wedding in Gaziantep at the weekend, that's just inside the Turkish border. 54 people were killed, many of them children.

That was a turning point for the Turks - a pivotal moment - but you may have also seen the image of a little Syrian boy that’s been circulating in the media over the last few days.

It’s everywhere. Facebook. Instagram, it’s on Twitter, it’s on digital news-sites. It’s unavoidable. 

Tragically, I don't think this image will be pivotal, but I do think it’s poised to become yet another iconic photo from the Syrian conflict.  There have been many.

There was the image of the little boy, a toddler, whose lifeless body was found washed up on a Turkish beach last year. There were the photos, too, from the chemical attack in Ghouta – that was three years ago this month. 

281 people died in that chemical attack – bombs laced with sarin were dropped on the city. Among the dead, scores of children who died a horrendous death. The images of people frothing from the mouth are to me, unforgettable.

In the image that's circulating at the moment, the little boy is alive, although perhaps only just. The image is compelling because he looks bewildered, impassive, confused – or maybe it’s shell shock. He’s been caught in an air-strike, possibly a barrel-bombing. The way his hair is sitting gives an indication of the force of the blast. His face is covered in blood. His body is covered in grey dust – the kind of grey dust that fills the air when mangled concrete collapses around you.

I talk about these horrific, iconic images as if they are unforgettable. But the truth is, I'm not sure they are. I think we've become immune to it.

More than five years on, it struggles to get a mention. The news agenda is dominated by Donald Trump. There was Brexit. How's that going to shake down? Our housing crisis, of course….and don’t forget the Olympics.  And what about the real housewives of Auckland? Reality TV at its finest, surely.

Some 300,000 Syrians have died in the conflict but I don't think that's even close to the real figure. That’s the official tally. But the number of people killed or maimed in this conflict so far, is much greater.

And all the while Assad and his regime go unchecked. They’re endorsed, protected and empowered militarily by Russia. The rebels – well, who are the rebels? America armed them initially, but now they’re are a hotch-potch of various groups -- a dangerous mix of jihadists, radicals and militants operate on the fringes. And so the indiscriminate killing goes on and on.

The cold hard truth is that we can’t do anything about the dead.  They’re dead. They're gone. Nothing can turn back time. But surely something can be done to help the living. To help people like the little boy who we saw in the photo with the dishevelled hair and the bloodied face.

It doesn’t require boots on the ground. In the first instance, it requires the world's superpowers to enforce a no-fly zone across an area of Syria to end the indiscriminate air strikes. A place where people, parents and families can go safe in the knowledge that they will not die in an airstrike.

This morning, watching the images of the Turks entering Syria, it's clear this is a war in all but name. The Americans are in there. The Russians, the Iranians, Lebanon's Hezbollah, the French, the Germans....but no-one is doing anything to preserve life.

And what a failure that is. And what of the United Nations? United in what? United perhaps in its collective failure to fulfil its mandate. To preserve life and to keep the peace. To save lives, for goodness sake.

And so as I look at the iconic mage of that little boy caught in an airstrike I know that tragically, because of so many failures at a political, diplomatic and humanitarian level, it won't be the last iconic image to emerge of a Syrian child caught in the midst of a war they didn't start and can't end.