President Obama today said he would seek the approval of congress before moving against Syria. Last week Syria allegedly used chemical weapons against its own people to subdue the uprising against President Assad and his regime. The outrage in the world leads one to believe that it is the United States that needs to do something. For humanitarian reasons something needs to be done to stop Assad from killing the people of Syria. But does it need to be the United States leading the charge? I know there are greater reasons for getting rid of Assad. The United States has military and economic reasons for acting against Syria besides the humanitarian focus.
I don’t know why I have been following this and thinking about this so much in the past few days. I just don’t think we should be getting into yet another conflict in the middle east. We have spent billions of dollars and lost many Americans in the effort to fix what’s wrong in the middle east. I have such mixed feelings. I know something needs to be done. But I just don’t think we need to be the country to do it. Right now it seems like we’d be going at it alone. The United Kingdom has already voted against joining the United States against Syria. There were protests today all across the globe against the United States taking any action.
I began to think about the Bush Doctrine when I heard the United States was ready to take action against Syria. I understand there are several meanings of the Bush Doctrine but the one I think about (from Wikipedia, and I know what people say about Wikipedia) is this:
“Different pundits would attribute different meanings to “the Bush Doctrine”, as it came to describe other elements, including the policy of preventive war, which held that the United States should depose foreign regimes that represented a potential threat to the security of the United States, even if that threat was not immediate; a policy of spreading democracy around the world, especially in the Middle East, as a strategy for combating terrorism; and a willingness to unilaterally pursue U.S. military interests.”
Is this what we’d be doing if we began a strike and possible war against Syria? I don’t know. There are details about this whole problem that I am probably not aware of. All I know is I don’t want the United States to enter yet another conflict in the middle east. I just think we need to concentrate our efforts at home. There is so much more that can be done in our own country. But at the same time I know something needs to be done for the innocent people of Syria. Its all very complicated. Do you have any strong feelings one way or another on the United States taking a lead on striking against Syria?
Yeah, I think that wars like that must be done with an International mandate—Afghanistan was, Iraq wasn’t (Bush’s propaganda about the “Coalition of the Willing” doesn’t count, obviously, since it was a fake international grouping).
When I heard John Kerry talking about the weapons allegedly used by the Syrian regime, my mind flashed back to Colin Powell assuring the world that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. We now know that the Bush regime lied about that—can we really trust ANY presidential administration to tell us the truth about such things? Fool me once, and all that.
President Obama going to Congress is a good idea, especially since the UK is out. But I also think a larger thing here is him dealing with the Party of No: Republicans criticised President Obama for NOT taking action, then when he said he would, they of course attacked THAT saying he had no mandate. Going to Congress is a case of him telling Republicans “put up or shut up”. That alone is reason enough!