For the last several weeks the world has been consumed with the talk of war. We are all witnesses to Syrian President Assad using chemical agents on his own people. Estimates run as high as 1,400 people were killed during this attack. We have had President Obama urging the world and our country’s leadership in Congress to not let this act go unpunished. The thought being, that if the world allows the use of chemical warfare, that it will become the norm. I am not sure how that stands up to history since Saddam Hussein allegedly used chemical warfare against the Kurds, so we crossed that line some time ago.
We have watched in horror as tens of thousands of Syrians have been killed in this bloody civil war. What is sad is the fighting isn’t just in Syria. People are killing each other (and us) in Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, plus smaller battles go on everyday in surrounding countries. There was news just yesterday of 3 people being beheaded in Pakistan. The harsh reality we are finding out is that, running a dictator out of power in one of these countries leads to an unhealthy shift and power with the new people in power worse than the old ones. In addition to today being the 11th anniversary of 9/11, and the deaths of over 3,000 of our citizens, it is the one year anniversary of the attack on our embassy in Benghazi; which left us with 4 dead heroes…butchered at the hands of monsters.
In those 11 years, our vocabulary has expanded as we have forcibly been dragged into a world not of our choosing. It’s September 11, 2013, welcome to the world of jihad, Caliphate, Sunni, Shiite, Sharia, burkas, martyrdom…and the list goes on and on, and on. Words, I dare say, very few Americans knew prior to 11 years ago today . The world has become a tinderbox, not only in the Middle East, but also on the African plains, and the jungles of East Asia. You would be extremely naïve to believe there are not terrorist cells hidden away in almost every city in the world, with some crazy nut hunched over a workbench making a bomb. Evidence, the Boston Marathon bombers…we live in a very dangerous place…even here on our own soil. Just book an airline ticket if you need reminding that we need to be constantly on guard.
With the anniversary of 9/11, we need to take a step back and come up with a new strategy; because the strategy we have now isn’t working so hot.
While I thought the atrocities in Syria were horrific, what made that act worth going to war over? As I pointed out, the Kurds suffered the same fate…but we didn’t help them. Countless thousands have been hacked to death in Darfur. Without the righteous indignation of actor, George Clooney, most of us wouldn’t even be aware of this chapter of man’s inhumanity to man. Yet we didn’t draw a line in the sand for those helpless individuals.
There are estimated to be 100,000 political prisoners rotting away in North Korean prison camps. The North Korean people suffer under a barbaric system whereby, if you commit a crime against the state, not only are you rounded up and thrown into prison forever…so are your parents…and so are your children. Three generations spend the rest of their lives in captivity in forced labor camps, with little to eat but the rats they catch. Children born in the camps, having committed no crime, will grow up only knowing the brutality of the camp.
My point is this…what made the Syrian child’s death worth the United States involvement? What made the child butchered in Africa not worth our interest? What made the North Korean child less valuable in the eyes of our country? Aren’t they all worth our outrage?
We need to raise the threshold for going to war. We think, with our weapons superiority, that we can fight a rather painless war. We have our drones and our missiles; so we are lulled into thinking we will have little loss of life…yet, we have 11 years of watching flag draped coffins arrive home. We can’t spend a day walking around our shopping malls without seeing a young person struggling without an arm, or a leg because we sent them off to war.
We use these cute little phrases like, “boots on the ground” to deflect the hard reality that there is a son, or daughter’s feet in those boots.
If we commit our children and our resources to fighting another’s battle; let’s make sure we have the clear objective of winning. If it is in our country’s best interest to become involved; let our response be swift and decisive…but let us also be prudent and judicious in our battles. When Vladimir Putin ends up looking like the Nobel Peace Prize winner, instead of President Obama…it’s time to head back to the drawing board. Let the President be cautious in what he commits for the rest of us.
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