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When bullets, bombs just won’t do

April 13, 2017   ·   0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

There’s an old episode of ‘All in the Family’ that focused on the gun debate in the U.S.

Archie Bunker’s daughter Gloria – an advocate of gun control – tells her father that 65 percent of the people murdered in the last 10 years were killed by handguns.

Archie’s classic reply was “Would it make you feel any better if they were pushed out of windows?”

The point is, they are still dead, regardless of the method used.

The recent gas attack in Syria was denounced by the West as ‘inhumane’ and ‘illegal’ according to the rules of the Geneva Protocol that was signed in 1925.

Yes, it is horrific to intentionally inflict pain, suffering, and eventual death on people – especially innocent civilians. However, the same countries that are ‘horrified’ by the gas attack are strangely quiet when children are killed by a bullet from a hidden sniper or are blown to bits by a barrel bomb dropped from a helicopter.

That, it seems is more acceptable and usually dismissed as ‘collateral damage’ – a unique military term for dehumanizing people when your missile misses the target and blows up a private dwelling rather than a tank.

The U.S. retaliated to the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons by unleashing a barrage of 59 cruise missiles on a single air base. That is a massive amount of firepower directed at apparently one target. According to media reports the attack was carried out to retaliate against the base that was responsible for the gas attack.

I’m not a military expert, but I’m pretty sure the logistics of carrying out such an operation that is based on ships at sea and miles and miles away from the target isn’t carried out in a matter of minutes. Even with today’s technology you don’t just flip a switch and expect your missile to hit a building hundreds of miles away.

This ‘retaliation’ has been in the works for a while – the apparent gas attack was just the needed excuse to carry it out.

It’s no secret the U.S. wants Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to be eliminated one way or another. And now Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is jumping on the bandwagon.

According to a CBC report, Trudeau said, “I think there’s no question that the medium and long-term future of a peaceful Syria no longer includes Bashar al-Assad.”

Well, maybe it’s not for the West to decide who should be in power in a Middle Eastern country. So far, the record of eliminating foreign leaders hasn’t turned out so well.

The Iraq war and mission to eliminate ‘weapons of mass destruction’ that didn’t exist and topple Saddam Hussein from power resulted in hundreds of thousands of innocent people dead – yeah, that’s called ‘collateral damage’ – one dead dictator, almost 5,000 American troops killed and over 30,000 wounded.

And what did that accomplish? Nothing. Postwar Iraq is a politically unstable mess that is far worse off than it was pre-invasion.

The U.S.-led attacks on Libya under the guise of ‘freedom’ and the ‘Arab Spring’ was just another attack on a dictator the U.S. didn’t like. American planes flew over 14,000 air sorties against Libyan targets. The result – another dead dictator, thousands of civilian lives lost, and another wildly unstable country.

Syria is currently in a serious mess. Of that there is no doubt.

America’s claims that the situation in Syria is a threat to U.S. national security are preposterous. A small country on the other side of the world with no possible way to attack U.S. interests is not a threat. The U.S. has been backing the rebels in Syria. The rebels have been fighting along with ISIS. But isn’t ISIS the enemy?

Increasing Western influence or involvement in this conflict would be a serious mistake.

It would just end in more body bags, more destruction, and more collateral damage – and in the end Syria will not rise from the ashes as a great democracy.

If any nations need to get involved it is the countries that border Syria and have a stake in what is happening in the region and understand the culture and way of thinking.

It’s time for the West to stay out of the Middle East and let them hash out their problems themselves.

You can’t force an unwilling people to accept your style of government and way of life.

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