The current turmoil in Syria, where tens of thousands of innocent citizens endure vicious and criminal cruelty from a rogue dictatorship, must stop. But how?
If we’ve learned nothing from the last century it must be that to stand silent in the face of evil makes all complicit. We cannot say, “We did not know.” Because we do.
The United States wields fear-inspiring military power, from drones, to stealth bombers, to nuclear terror. But that is insufficient for unilateral intervention in Syria. We should not intrude because we can, nor because we must.
We, too, were forged in revolution and hammered by civil war. We’ve refused to be denied education, be enslaved by dogma or obliged to conform. And while striving for the civil rights and liberty of all citizens, we’ve produced the world’s strongest economy.
Employing these freedoms, we have learned trust in the power of democracy and freedom of the marketplace. We’ve decried rule by kings, queens or dictators, instead embracing the wisdom of the crowd.
If this faith in freedom is to be validated, should we not export it through leadership not might, through collaboration not coercion? Shouldn’t we know from own political experiment that we’ll best confine the dogs of war by liberating the power of accord?
The strongest way forward is through the United Nations, employing the same principles that require Congress to declare war. By respecting the autonomy of nations and enabling the UN, we protect the innocent from murderous and unthinkable acts of violence and terror, even our own.
The UN must be the multilateral peace-keeping force that fights genocide and state-sanctioned murder. If we fail the UN or the UN fails us all, there can only be continual bloodshed, brutality and bedlam. Our future and that of the nations of the world are inextricably intertwined.
Neither we nor other nations with the power to do so hold moral authority to act alone—except to defend ourselves. If terror is unleashed within our borders or on our citizens, we must respond—alone if necessary—quickly, decisively and with all our might.
High Streams: Sorting fact from belief 
This is just like Iraq! Look at what our benevolent humanitarian intervention did there.
Obama is like Bush
Kerry is like Colin Powell
Saddam is like Assad.
Congress is likely to do what Congress does best- rolling over and playing dead:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_war_resolution
Obama is being a little smart, looks like he wants to dump responsibility on them. I call BS.
I call BS on the whole thing. We’re not going to make things better. We don’t know how to make peace, we only know how to fight wars. Everywhere we go is a train wreck. We should learn from our own very recent examples in Iraq, Libya, Egypt …. the list is endless.
” Something must be done about the unmarried mothers of England.”
G. B. Shaw ‘What, for instance?”
If the dogs of accord reside in the moral authority of the UN, and the UN won’t act, what then?
Your final line “we must respond, quickly decisively with all our might,” is the most frightening line I have seen in all the debate. Particularly the last four words!
I’M Working on a draft which is due to appear Sept 11. Have a look at a rough draft,
THE USE OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS—AN OBSCENITY (9/11)
The world is faced with what appears to be a fresh obscenity. It has become obvious that the Syrian government has deployed weapons of mass destruction against a civilian population. At this writing the exact nature of the device is unclear, but a red line has been crossed, and neither the United States nor other civilized nations can any longer sit back and ignore the attack. The weapon is probably some form of Serin, which is a clear, colorless and tasteless liquid that has no odor in its pure form. It is made up of four common chemical compounds: dimethyl methylphosphonate, phosphorus trichloride, sodium fluoride and alcohol. Over a thousand children, babes in arms, innocent civilians all have had the lives sucked out of them.
President Obama will strike Syria, but will wait on Congress to debate the issue, even if he believes he has the authority as Commander and Chief to launch an attack. The American people are war weary complicated by the sense that we went into war against Iraq on false premeses.
Chemically based WMDs are not new in warfare. In WW I, mustard gas was the chemical weapon of choice. Even though it had subsequently been outlawed by the Geneva Convention, the US army admitted using mustard gas in Korea. Since N. Korean troops has no gas masks, it was particularly effective.
When my wife and I were discussing the day’s news she said, “What about Napalm?” Napalm was and is produced by the Dow Chemical Company. And it, along with other chemical compounds, is still being stockpiled by the American military. Napalm therefore, must be characterized as a chemical WMD. So as heinous as the Syrian use of Serin may be, perhaps the United States might pause for a moment, recalling that a chemical weapon is any device made from standard chemicals and deliverable by a bomb or an explosive missile. What is more, the United States has employed more chemical weaponry than any other nation in history.
Napalm is jellied gasoline. Its name is an acronym of naphthenic and palmitic acids, which are used in its manufacture. Napalm became notorious in Vietnam where it was used in three capacities. Possibly its most extensive use was being dropped from aircraft in large canisters which tumbled sluggishly to earth. Exploding on impact, they engulfed large areas in flame, sucking up all the oxygen and emitting intense heat, thick black smoke, and a smell which no one exposed to it will ever forget. Dropping napalm from high-speed jet aircraft was far from accurate, resulting in thousands of instances of civilian casualties. A second use was in flame-throwers, which proved successful in clearing bunkers. If the flames could not be directed to penetrate the bunker, they could bathe the bunker in fire, consuming all the oxygen and suffocating those inside. Flamethrowers also were used in destroying “enemy” villages. Throughout the duration of the war, 1965 – 1973, eight million tons of bombs were dropped over Vietnam; this was more than three times the amount used in WWII. A considerable potion of these bombs contained napalm.
Agent Orange is a toxic chemical herbicide that was used from about 1965 – 1970 in the Vietnam War. It was one of the main chemical weapons employed during Operation Ranch Hand. This operation was intended to deprive Vietnamese farmers and guerilla fighters of clean food and water in hopes they would relocate to areas more heavily controlled by the U.S. By the end of the operation over twenty million gallons of herbicides and defoliants were sprayed over forests and fields.
Agent Orange is fifty times more concentrated than normal agricultural herbicides; this extreme intensity completely destroyed all plants in the area. Agent Orange not only had devastating effects on agriculture but also on people and animals. The Vietnam Red Cross recorded over 4.8 million deaths and 400,000 children were born with birth defects due to exposure to Agent Orange. The military use of Agent Orange was later determined to be in violation of the Geneva Convention.
While the Syrian government must be called to account for these latest attacks, any military response by the United States must be done with a certain humility when faced with our use of chemical weapons against helpless “enemies.” While no one has a desire to refight the tragic war against Vietnam, neither do we have any self-righteous cause to stand in judgment on this obscene Syrian attack.
Charles Bayer
candwbayer@verizon.net
Thanks for all your comments. I would distill my view to this: we must make the UN work, since there’s not a chance in hell of making Syria do so. Or the rest of the Middle East. Or sub-Saharan Africa.
We must use our economic and military influence to do what we can do best: work the politics of the world to make the UN function in its proper peacekeeping role. China and Russia? Sure, they want to block us. So make them vote. Make them stand up in front of the world as guardians of genocide. I believe we can make China and Russia abstain. I think they’re bluffing.
Regardless, even if this time our efforts to empower the UN fail. We should go back every time. Again and again. We can and should elevate their stature to become the democratic forum for the world to bring order to its most troublesome hot spots—which they’re supposed to be doing now anyway.
What we should not and must not do is act unilaterally. We’re doomed if we continue to think we can be the world police. We’re only 300 million against 7,000+ million, a good portion of whom have nothing and nothing left to lose.
We went into Vietnam with cynical self-interest to stop the spread of communism. (Why we’d think we needed to do that is a whole ‘nother conversation!) But we did. And we apparently learned nothing from the experience.
Because then Bush II took us into Iraq when there were many, including some of us, who said this will be another debacle. (There were also some of us who said we’d be in and out in six weeks.) Again, we seem to have learned nothing.
And now…now we’re thinking about regime change in Syria? Because we won’t stop at slapping Assad on the knuckles. (Again one wonders on what moral authority we assume we have that right. Just what is the moral difference among Agent Orange, Serin, drones, Cruise missiles, or sniper fire?)
While the UN should intervene in Syria to stop the slaughter of its own citizens, Syrians must ultimate be responsible for Syria. Same goes for Israel, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and all the rest. The UN–not us–should be sorting out the whole lot and there’s no better time than now to make them step up to the plate.
The UN gives moral fiber to collective and democratic global action—and should be the basis through which we commit young men and women to action and possible loss of their limbs or lives–not the sordid and ineffectual politics in Washington DC.
Finally, because some fools at home and abroad might think working the UN is a sign of weakness, we should be clear that in the face of terrorism against the U.S. we too will look to the UN for justice. But should the UN fail to function, we’ll be left with no choice but to act in our own defense–as a last resort, not as the first. If required to do so, the world must understand that our response will not be equivocal.
Write your Congresspersons, your Senators, yo’ momma! We have to stop the slaughter! Of Syrians. And of our young.
Peace!