SYRIA OUR SHARED TRAGEDY/I CANNOT RECONCILE One of the many things that I can attribute to the Bush/Republican era is the consolidation of our massive inability to act globally in the real defense of human suffering and slaughter. We have been lied to so many times in this country by grinning politicians assuring the public that it is “in the interest and safety of world democracy” to engage in armed conflict with countries that we now know would have been better off had we never fired a shot. Oil in Iraq was the real “weapon of mass destruction” that we went to protect. Afghanistan, a country used as a battlefield for Superpower (or so we thought Superpower) saber swinging (ironically we with the Taliban and Russia with the Northern Alliance—what a difference a different piece of geography makes in the world of friends and enemies). And further back with bombings under Clinton, conveniently timed to correspond to some particular domestic crisis, and further back to Vietnam, the wealth of mineral and metal resources and also, itself, another Superpower battlefield. I do not support war or colonialist expansion (physically or culturally) nor am I a pacifist. I abhor violence and can do so because my life exists in such a way that I am not required to commit violence to protect my family nor myself; a reality not shared by all Americans. Knowing that time, place and condition, creates different answers and different solutions to the ability to survive on a daily basis, I cannot in all honesty say I am opposed to violence in all its forms. To protect whom I love, and those who cannot protect themselves, I know myself capable of much. I have major disagreements with my President, however, his passion and repulsion at what he has seen in Syria, that perspective I share with him 100%. His call, no matter how poorly timed or during a process not yet fully developed, is what was needed. Hundreds and hundreds of people poisoned and gassed to death; children, women, men, workers, peasants, parents, this we do know with some certainty. Calls by people to wait until congress approves of any action, is based upon the assumption that Congress itself is even capable of action, particularly action where the material interests of the Untied States are not what is under threat. To expect that this Congress would respond to a horrific attack upon humanity and the basic human values that we teach our children is beyond fantastical thinking. I do not know if a “strike” is the proper response, or a massive funding of the resistance movement, including arms. I do not know. But I do know I cannot support doing little or nothing. And I find myself faced with a horrific act of human destruction on one hand and wrestling on the other with the ideas that made me demonstrate against the invasion of Iraq, in Balboa Park in 2003; and I realize that the ideas that drove me to demonstrate in that circumstance do not apply equally here and are not useful in seeking to disrupt the death and destruction of human life in Syria
Posted on: Mon, 02 Sep 2013 19:00:33 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015