Syria: What To Do?

No choice can be clear. No choice can be definitive. Ultimately, we have no idea how any of the presented scenarios will impact Syria. Even simply remaining outside the problem and ignoring it is fraught with peril, if Syria falls to elements who have the intent of creating a paradise for fanatical & radical elements of Islam. What we're going through with Syria now is akin to situations that have sprung up throughout history, where some nations have had to determine whether intercession in the affairs of another nation were to their betterment or detriment.

This isn't about President Obama, or the partisan split in Washington, D.C., or even about military jingoism and the furtherance of failed Imperialistic policies. It comes down to this: how much do we care about the people of Syria? You can cloak this issue in any talking point you choose, wrap it in discord, fluff it with care & concern, but as each second ticks away, bodies fall. They've been falling steadily for two years. It's Syria's civil war but it's humanity's view of the future: are we willing to accept the wholesale slaughter of a nation by its government?

We're ones to talk. America has its own chemical weapons, America has killed thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions in war. We fought one of the bloodier civil wars in known memory. Where do we get off dictating who can do what to whom?

It's not really that simple, anymore.

Human history is replete with atrocity. Just in the last 100 years, tens of millions have been fed into the meat grinder that is geopolitical conflict and dictatorial overreach. We have now harbored weapons for close to seventy years that have the capacity to eradicate all human life on the planet. We have stood each other off with pointed sticks, cold steel, hot lead, the fiery hearts of stars, the insidious clutches of vile microbes, and the misty smoke of caustic chemicals. We have reached the pinnacle of destructive power. No amount of wishful thinking or eye blinking will make it all go away.

But we live in an unprecedented time, when technology has placed the happenings on our planet in our living rooms in minutes, and given us access to people globally in seconds. What happens anywhere is suddenly accessible at almost any moment, and people who were lines in a newspaper or on a map are now flesh-and-blood before us. Conflict and strife are no longer distant rumblings; the people involved in them are no longer strangers.

If we want peace, we have to make it. Preferably through forbearance, forgiveness, and friendship, but we must also accept that we, as a species, being on the cusp of breaking from the long, gloomy traditions of violence that plague us, cannot always simply toss aside the tools of war. If we must take up arms against a sea of troubles, let those who take them up do so with the noblest intent, despite whatever may have come before. Let a precedent be set that says we will end destructive conflicts with words, with gestures, with diplomacy, where we can, but we will not be afraid to end them as we must.

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent," Isaac Asimov wrote in his novel "Foundation," and it is definitive in its indictment of war mongering as a means to an end. That phrase, however, means more when yours is a society that is no longer locked in the shackles of conflict, when your leverage is not merely at the end of a gun barrel. Right now, we are incompetent, and remain so until we can tamp down the sparks that set alight the conflagrations that engulf races, cultures, countries, and creeds.

So let us choose wisely, but let us choose, and let us know that whatever the choice, there will be consequences and repercussions, unseen and unbidden. People will still die, but perhaps we can pave a better road to peace by showing our resolve to have peace. When it is over, we will bury the dead, ask forgiveness, and move on, as humans always have, hopefully wiser and more resolute not to let it happen again.

Turning Bones To Dust

The streets of Homs in Syria are slowly becoming caked in the blood of people whose only offense is that they prefer freedom to tyranny, as the tyrant shows his love for "his" people by showering them with a fusillade of rockets and mortars. Not unlike Libya in the recent past, a people seek to throw off the yolk of oppression, and are willing to fight if that is their only recourse. But there is fighting for freedom and then there is being an animal penned for the slaughter, and right now freedom lasts only as long as the whistling shriek of the shells.

The Syrian government refuses all calls to remove itself from power. Any deals brokered to do so are quickly cast aside or forgotten. The Arab League seems powerless to act. Certain members of the United Nations obstinately refuse to acknowledge the dying shrieks that ring forth amid the shuddering blasts that fill the town. Condemnation is rife, but action is nigh invisible. No sanctions, no blockade, can shield a populace from the hellish fury of a dictator bent on retaining power.

It is perhaps incumbent upon the United States to once more be forced to take the lead, as it is ever so. Surely, there will be nattering in many corners by some, who will first chastise us for doing nothing then chastise us again for taking action. But, do we dare stand idly by and let innocents suffer? No one has ever handed us a badge, but many have looked to us in the past to take up the mantle of protector of freedom and defender of liberty. There can be only be hand-wringing in engaging in another conflict, but there can be no peace while blood is spilled in the name of tyranny.

What to do? We must come to a decision soon. Where we wish to keep the sword, we do so with the tacit knowledge that we will be called upon to wield it. We must be unwilling, we must be reticent, lest we become enamored of our power, but the time comes when other considerations must be laid aside and the greater good must step to the fore. We cannot allow people to die where we can do something to stop it. Let it be that we take action now, and when it is done, take that same energy of destruction and turn it to energy of construction. A people cry out; how can we not answer?