I’ve never been a close follower of foreign policy, but this whole Syria thing has me worried.
First off, this is one of those situations where there is no Good Guy. The Brutal Dictator or the Muslim Brotherhood? My choice is to leave them alone completely.
Unfortunately, there are innocent people dying, caught between these two.
I’d like to go in and help these people, of course. It’s a natural human emotion. But I am not sure we can, and I am not sure it is worth it. After all, our experience in getting involved in the Middle East has been less than stellar. Sure, we got rid of bin Laden, Morsi, and Qadaffi, but it’s not like enlightened democracies sprung up to replace them. Maybe they’re just not ready for that yet.
What worries me is the banging of the Drums of War in Congress, where a vast majority of politicians are encouraging Obama to do something. (Hey, remember when the Constitution required Congress to declare war? Man, those were the days.) Only around 25% of the population is in favor of military action, but of course Congress constantly goes against our wishes.
I wish there was an easy answer.
ventrellaquest.com 
The media (regular news broadcasters) seem to be banging the war drums as well. But we’ve got too many dismembered and dead from the last two wars (is Afghanistan even over yet?) to jump on this bandwagon.
Obama got trapped by his own rhetoric: “We can leave Assad alone as long as he doesn’t use chemical weapons. Oh, what’s that? Crap.”
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Hi Ventrella and Mark,
Excellent reply to an equally good post.
I have to agree with your view on the media driven stance on Syria and indeed I have argued similar points as you (both) have made here. One of my points was that media/News outlets MUST be held responsible for their actions/statements regarding such issues, as apologies and retractions are of little use to our troops who return disabled or set out to take their own lives. It equally worries me that most if not all of these Media groups are privately owned and appear to be driven by their own agendas.
The link is here http://wp.me/p3uJmM-1j if that is OK with Ventrella
Regards
Total World View
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But what’s going on in Syria isn’t unique to this world. Nor is it even the worst in the past 20 years. What right do we – the United States – truly have in barging into another country internal conflict? And if we DO have claim to have the right, then why aren’t we doing it in ALL the countries where innocents are being killed?
Fortunately, not all those in congress are quite as war-mongering as we fear. Here’s an article showing a bi-partisan(ish) group of 116 Representatives asking silly questions like, “WHY are we doing this?” And “What’s the intended effect?” And “What’s the message we’re sending?”
It’s interesting that the Republicans outnumber the Democrats in this “Wait a second, let’s think this through before going to war.” I suppose politics has a greater impact than positions.
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/nation_world/20130829_ap_a7df2a4699ef4cbcb9fea853247f728d.html
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There is no upside to us getting involved. Like you, I feel for the innocents getting harmed, but I also know there is little we can do to help them in a meaningful way. Unless we go in boots on the ground and completely eradicate the government there is nothing we can accomplish–and remember how well doing exactly that worked in Iraq? The people in Congress seem to be too stupid to learn from history, but I thought Obama was smarter than that. And I have a sneaking suspicion that the only reason Congress wants Obama to do something is so that they can vindicate Bush by saying, “See! Obama did the same thing Bush did!” Because this Congress has made it quite clear that they only support Obama when it forwards their own agenda of making him look bad.
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Interesting post, I can associate with some of your ideals, baring this in mind, this may be of interest to you:
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While I can see the obvious positive humanitarian reasons in this situation, I think that 1) the overall beneficial effect we might have isn’t going to happen in a long drawn out conflict (which is what it will be if we put boots on the ground over there) and 2) the only winners in such a mess would be the war profiteers. (Always a real bad reason to get involved in any conflict/war, but also happens to be my concern for the reason behind the saber rattling going on right now – that our ever wonderful military industrial complex is simply looking to justify their yearly overly porkish chow down on gov’t monies…)
Hence, I don’t think we should even get involved in this unless we’re part of a larger group of nations (like United Nations/NATO/and Et el) going in with the express purpose of capturing/eliminating whoever is in charge of this Syrian regime and not getting into a prolonged war or anything like that.
As I’ve mentioned before in other places on this subject – we are not going to be the “Superman” style hero here, no matter what we do. (Nor *should* that be our job!)
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