There is a common tone that I am hearing from the people who think we should bomb Syria. Hysteria, basically.
I have a friend who posted on my facebook page that if we didn’t bomb Syria, it was proof of the ethical and moral death of America, because it would be a betrayal of Israel. I am a bit confused as to how bombing Damascus is supposed to help Israel. It won’t necessarily get rid of Assad and even if it did, so what? However this civil war turns out, it is a virtual certainty that Syria will remain hostile to Israel. Dropping bombs on them is just going to piss them off even more. Also, if Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay didn’t mark the moral and ethical death of American, I don’t think anything will.
Christiane Amanpour – Generally, I admire the woman, but we disagree on this
Then, there was Christiane Amanpour’s rant yesterday on CNN: “The president of the United States and the most moral country in the world based on the most moral principles in the world, at least that’s the fundamental principle that the United States rests on, cannot allow this to go unchecked…” Most moral country in the world? Are you serious, Christiane? We totally condoned chemical weapons when Saddam Hussein used them against the Kurds, because he was our ally at the time. We used chemical weapons in Viet Nam, among our many other crimes there. We have been starting wars and overthrowing legitimately elected governments for a long time, including Mohammed Mosadegh in 1953, from which all of our troubles in the Middle East stem.
But, I digress.
It’s not just that I disagree with what they are saying. What disturbs me is the intensity and the urgency with which they are saying it, as if the worst thing in the world would be for us to refrain from violent retribution for a couple of weeks, or a month, or a year, or forever, while we think this over and try to talk it out.
They are like alcoholics being told that they can’t have just one more drink, that they have to stop right now. They know, viscerally, how satisfying it would feel to see Assad punished, to see videos on TV of buildings being blown apart, of people wailing and shrieking in Arabic over the dead bodies of their loved ones in rubble strewn streets, to make somebody pay.
It pains them that they’re going to have to go without that. But, this is a good thing. If the war addicts are forced to live without this, maybe it will be easier to reject violence the next time, and the time after that.
Giving up violence is not going to be easy, but we can do it. One incident at a time.
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