Let’s not bomb Syria. Wouldn’t that be great?
What if——and I know this will sound so radically crazy it will be hard to comprehend at first—–the United States did nothing in Syria? What if we didn’t take the bait every time? What if we remembered that we’ve been involved in a war for 217 out of our 237 years as a country (we’re currently not even finished with Afghanistan, the equivalent of wanting to get ice cream before you’ve finished your vegetables)? What if we didn’t insert ourselves into a conflict that is, frankly, none of our business? What if we didn’t stick our big noses/missiles into every damn corner of the planet? [Except Africa, since enemies like Iran aren’t usually backing any sides there, we don’t seem to care how many millions wind up dead.]
Every corner of the planet, that is, except our own country, where we’re more than happy to do nothing, as evidenced by education, healthcare, and a crumbling infrastructure. We don’t have to ask “What would it look like if we did nothing in Syria?” Because we just have to point to Detroit.
It’s more than a little weird that the same people who say we shouldn’t bail out one of America’s major cities (now the largest municipal bankruptcy in our history) are the same ones saying we “must” do something in Syria. It’s also strange that a lot of the non-politicians advocating strikes in Syria would never in a million years support sending aid to a country like Syria or any third world nation.
It seems to be less about helping the Syrian people, than it is about blowing someone/anyone up. [We don’t really even know what the opposition is, and what it would look like leading Syria, it could reasonably be worse than Assad. We just want to pick a side, any side, so we can start launching missiles.] Maybe it’s the same tendency that wants to go to war with any two-bit shit-hole on the planet, while our own country struggles to keep some of our bridges from collapsing.