CHARLES BLOW: "Using dead children as a mask for America’s militaristic instinct=REPUGNANT" [View all]

[kpete]

“Here’s my question for every member of Congress and every member of the global community: What message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no price?”

What price should be and how it must be paid is the question here. The bombs-or-nothing argument that many proponents of United States military action have taken rings hollow. There is a mile of distance between grieving for dead children and avenging those deaths through military force.

Furthermore, one can simultaneously express sorrow for the dead, particularly the children, and resist direct United States military intervention. This is a false choice that uses the dead children as a mask for America’s militaristic instinct, and one that I find repugnant.

In fact, the everyday rhetoric in support of an American strike becomes evermore expansive. This is no longer just about punishing Assad for using chemical weapons. It’s now about sending a signal and shoring up American credibility at the risk of war spreading throughout the region. So creeps the mission.



http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/07/opinion/blow-remembering-all-the-children.html?ref=charlesmblow&_r=2&