It is time
for the people of the United States to cease being herded to war like sheep. It
is time to question our leaders and not simply follow where they lead. It is
time to stop enjoying the arrogance that we are the most powerful nation on
earth while simultaneously having our “security” threatened by every event in
every backwater of the world. How does the recent tragedy which occurred in the
Syrian civil war affect our “security”? We hear that mantra constantly
repeated, but I haven’t heard an articulation of the nature of the threat that
is so massive and imminent that it justifies us going to war against a minor
regime already in the throes of civil war. I find it difficult to credit the
horror our leaders express over the deaths of the Syrians caused by an alleged
chemical weapon, when we killed many more civilians, women and children in the
first hour of “shock and awe” in Iraq in an extra-legal attack over imaginary
WMD. No, they are not motivated by regret over senseless death. Any
intervention by the U.S. will not be motivated by humanitarian concern or
defense of the integrity of an ancient convention. It will be motivated by the
reward of regime change to our on-going strategy to eliminate any challenges to
our hegemonic geo-political scheme to establish suzerainty over the region and
its precious oil.
Of course
there will be those who will claim my allegation is “anti-American”, but I request
they measure the tempo and volume of the rhetoric of our warmongers against the
information in the following articles.
Does it seem
strange to anyone that according to the first article, dated 9/3/13, that
samples from the site are just now reaching the laboratories where they will be
examined to determine what actually caused the deaths of the victims? But our President has already drawn his
conclusions and apparently thinks retaliation is so urgently needed that
waiting for the results of the investigation is dangerous to OUR “security”. It
is worth noting that some aspects of the forensic investigation will be to
determine if the weapon was “improvised or designed for military use”, “possibly
indicate the type delivery device used”, and ascertain the nature of the agent
used. From all that we’ve heard from
official channels you’d believe all these questions had been resolved. But
today we see they’re still open and haven’t even begun to be examined for
actionable fact. As “peaceful Americans”
you’d think the answer to these questions would have a bearing on the grave
decision to wage war. But following our imperial pattern it looks as if the President
believes it is urgent to attack ‘before’ the facts are known, an urgency that
is obviously tactical rather than altruistic.
The second article offers some perspective on chemical weapons and chemical weapons as WMD. The content of the two articles seem to require an intellectual and moral hesitancy that belies the rabid surety our leaders express by foreordained dismissal even in advance of the result of investigation and without a decent measure of certainty that should be required for war.
The farce of
Congressional approval is meaningless unless there is someone in Congress,
anyone, who will question how and why the Syrian civil war need become another
American war. It is meaningless if any independent operator, any paid
sociopath, any demented imperialist, any revenge seeker can compel this nation
to war because of impolitic rhetoric that obligates us to act without facts or
rationality. We, the President, and the Congress are too “for” war and too
little “against’ it to be the positive force in the world we claim to be.
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