Did I just stop by DU and find people PUSHING for war against Syria? [View all]

[Ken Burch]

Why on Earth would anyone think we could help anything positive happen in Syria or anywhere else in the Middle East through the use of military force?

Did those who advocate that FORGET that our invasion of Iraq basically made nothing at all better? I mean, ok, Saddam is gone but he'd have been gone soon anyway-and it's not as if anything has improved for the population as a result of the current crop of sectarian con-artists running the place.

None of the armed factions in Syria is pro-democracy. None is pro-secular. None is for anything progressive. The militias there fight solely for tribal or sectarian supremacy...and it doesn't MATTER who wins between the Sunnis, the Shiites, or the Alawites. No religious or ethnic faction there has any claim whatsoever to moral superiority over any of the others.

And it goes without saying that, due to the alliances involved, ANY war with Syria will inevitably become a war with Iran and Russia as well. If it becomes war with Russia, we could end up vaporizing the damn planet after all.

There is no "lesser evil". There is no possible "ally". There is nothing at all but killing for the sake of killing. There are people in Syria who favor democracy, secularism, and social justice, but they don't have any weapons and they won't have any hope of influencing any possible "winner" no matter what.

And the worst possible argument of all is the argument that we HAVE to go to war against Syria to "stay in the game" against Russia and China as "a world power". For the love of God, people, this is the argument that kept us in Vietnam for years and years. It was a bullshit excuse for mass killing in 1965 and it's STILL a bullshit excuse. Nobody should ever again have to die for "national prestige".
We have to, at long last, be above that kind of thinking it we're ever to be a civilized nation.