Since when did a
democratically elected official’s oath in the House and Senate become, “I will
do what I want in your best interests even if you voters don’t understand how
good this is for you?”
We have elected
representatives from Virginia and across the nation who are telling us they are
going to disregard what we’re telling them – and vote to attack Syria anyhow.
They treat us like children
to whom they’re administering castor oil.
But we are not children,
and the members of Congress are supposed to serve us, not the other way around.
More to the point, we should
not be putting American lives and honor at risk in an uncertain and
questionable act of war against Syria, taking sides, advantaging one side over
another, in the midst of “their” civil war.
The Administration
proposes to bomb “carefully selected targets” to Kingdom Come for as long as 90
days.
We’re told we’ll
accomplish this without killing any innocents, without spilling a drop of nerve
gas, and without putting our nation at risk of reprisal from allies to Syria
including Iran.
Most Americans don’t
trust what we’re being told and why we need to make this war.
The Senate Foreign
Relations Committee resolution characterizes this bicameral congressional vote
as an effort to “change the momentum on the [Syrian] battlefield.” We say we’re warring to limit the use of
chemical weapons, but the Senate seems to think it is to win the war instead
for the rebels.
Of course, any bombing by
the United States may not go as neatly as we imagine. Syria may uncork stores of nerve gas in
response, presuming they have already, because our bombing compromised their
ability to conduct their civil war?
My reaction has
hardened with the Administration’s hard sell to war in Syria.
The more I hear the
worse this plan to war sounds.
I doubt I’d trust any
administration these days who told me why we needed to war.
The bitter irony is
that President Obama was our peace candidate (at least in 2008).
Senator Kerry, our
Secretary of State, opposed the war in ‘Nam and had an explanation for why he wrongly
voted to war in Iraq when he was a presidential candidate.
But when you have the
power to war, the impulse is to war.
Most wars begin with a
lie that it’s a war of defense or of for humanitarian reasons – when it’s
nothing of the sort.
We propose to drop
bombs in retaliation for those who were killed with nerve gas.
This action favors the
rebels who were unconcerned as a matter of public relations when they broadcast
pictures of their own firing squads.
I believe President Jack
Kennedy handled the Cuban missile crisis the way he did because he learned from
the Bay of Pigs to take his own counsel if he wanted to avoid war.
President Kennedy learned
to dial back from a nuclear confrontation and had the capacity and resolve to
resist those who would war rather than negotiate.
Presidents who get
these powers, are confused that they are derivative, coming from the people, held
in service for the nation, not their own historic legacy, not to see their
names immortalized, not to break things up – but too few get JFK's second chance
to get it right.
The mid-east is an open
wound ready to hemorrhage in a way and at a time when America would be dragged
into an international conflict that we, the people, plainly don’t support and can't
afford at home. Nor do you have to have
attended West Point to understand this basic point.
“Yes we can”- as a
slogan - accomplished a lot of other things.
But, there are some
things, the guiding instruction is, “No, we can’t,” for we don’t have the
stomach to tolerate this Syrian adventure.
Paraphrasing that great
American philosopher Clint Eastwood, a nation ought to know its limitations. It
should also know what is right and timely, and this war in Syria is neither.
