I really don't think bombing Syria would hurt anyone

[The Straight Story]

32. My view

With great power comes great responsibility.

We ARE a super power in the world. Who else is going to act, Brazil? Sweden?

How many times have I read stories over the years here on DU (and elsewhere) where we were shocked that people turned and walked away from someone being raped/murdered - people who probably had the same mindset: "I am not the police, that is someone Else's job, not mine"

You said "Obama would win a lot of respect from the international community if he DOESN'T start a war and the US could start regaining some credibility." - OK...to what end? Assad is doing what he does and no one gives a damn. No one is doing jack about it - and you want me to care what these other countries think when it comes to us doing something?

Why should we? What are they going to do about it? Whine? Write a strongly worded letter? Hell, they won't do anything about this situation (that has been going on for years, and when the UN was involved Russia and China vetoed our peaceful efforts to deal with it, see my timeline links in previous post).

We CAN do something about it. We have the ability to do so. The argument is "Let's not get involved, not our people dying". Well hell, I though progressives saw beyond the whole "My people" argument and actually saw the worth of humans beyond just those who live here. Obviously that is not true.

We might as well take out some headlines that say "The one super power in the world who can do something about the use of chemical/biological/nuclear weapons has agreed not to interfere with those who use them. Please proceed." because that is the message being sent.

The US has been trying to stem the tide of death there (again, see our previous attempts with the UN/etc). Now it has been ratcheted up a notch and the peaceful ways we have tried have not worked.

As far as the entire world....where was Costa Rica in trying to get the UN to intervene. Sweden. Lothoso. Russia (vetoed). Etc and so on. If anything THEY have lost credibility because they choose to ignore the wholesale slaughter of people and stay cloistered in their own little cocoons and do nothing.

My how we have railed about the state of evil in the world over what happened in ww2 and how people did nothing.

And yet, we here who call ourselves progressives are doing the same thing. Not our business. Ooooh someone might not like us if we do something. Let's focus on something else and pretend it is not happening because it is not happening to us here.

Ignore it all. Assad owns those people, they are his to do with as he pleases. They are his property to gas.

Will be a cold day in hell before I call myself a progressive and feel that the right course of action is to do nothing - and I will state again that we have tried peace, have been for YEARS if you read the time lines I posted. At some point you have to intervene and try something different - unless, of course, those people mean nothing and their deaths don't bother you.

They bother me elsewhere in the world as well (congo/rwanda/etc) and when we can act together with the UN/etc and find peaceful means to fix things I am all for that. We have tried that. It has failed.

If the most powerful nation on the world gives you a pass to do as you wish with weapons that 98% of the world has condemned...well then we have no right to say a damned thing when every other country in the world seeks out such weapons and use them.

You draw a line. You stand by it. Or you turn away and become an isolationist and then wonder why, later, the world has went to hell.

Obama is not bush. This is not Iraq. And if people want to make it something it is not there is nothing I can do to convince them.