The Old "Follow Me."

This gets a little old, not to mention just the overall toll of the wars in the Middle East, but with respect to prospective ones, including a possible introduction to additional conflicts by the proposed air and other coordinated strikes the U.S. president is trying to persuade the U.S. public and legislature about at this point.  In spirit, and in seeing the cataclysmic gassing of al – Assad’s people by their own, internally trusted regime, is an abomination.  Most people are able to agree on that.  Al – Assad will, win, lose or draw, in this current situation, cite extenuating and special circumstances relating to the status of those gassed and killed, or those gassed and injured, with a dismissal that characterizes the completely callous and unoriginally diabolical mentality as shown by the leaders of soviet client and former soviet client countries.  Years ago, under the Hussein regime in Iraq, there was a huge to – do about the gassing and other violent things done to the Kurds in Northern Iraq.  Hussein at the time simply indicated to a disbelieving and humane, and otherwise well – thinking Western public that the Kurds were unwanted and needed to be eliminated due to their rabble rousing and trouble – making on the Iraqis.  This writer predicts al – Assad will use much the same rationale, that the people are unwanted and are hooligans and really nobody who knows his details really cares, and he needs to by this answer to a world judicial court for war crimes; the difficulty will be in enforcing international law and actually bringing al – Assad into court session, presumably in Brussels or in the Hague.

People like me are wholeheartedly in the camps of the current Secretary of State (John Kerry) and the U.S. president Obama when they call for military retaliation against the Syrian regime for the crime of using wide – area weapons, nerve agents and gasses that are carried by the wind and that cover more of an expanse under the circumstances than for instance a bombing would, against his own populace.  This is not just because a report or two got out of Syria this had happened and people have to mention themselves in one camp or another, but simply because, and this despite the risks the regime has taken that have jeopardized its stability and further favorability to the West in westernizing and reforming its institutions; gassing people is wrong.  Innocents by this meet their ends and others at least come very close to passing in very isolated, controlled and gruesome ways from this life, which had for them great value and great potential, especially among the young, and at least the morality of the destruction of gassing agents and nerve agents, etc., and the sinister and overall criminal minds by their deployment against one’s proper citizens, makes the act of using such agents inadmissible and criminal in act, intent, and in the planning and stated or unstated purpose of such attacks against, again, innocents for the most part.  Despite the overall repressiveness of regimes like the one in Syria, and the connection of that regime to former communist principal(s) who are arms dealers and economic and commercial suppliers (sometimes gratis) of goods and other material for domestic consumption by the country’s elites and for war, its people should be allowed to live their lives to the fullest, and this given what is called for morally and normally within Syrian society.  What has the U.S. president asking our legislature and others for support in an attack against these perpetrations is his, again overall and entirely correct, principal or self – governing rule or rules about the sanctity of human life; something extremely valuable taught in every college at Harvard and instilled in the gifted people who attend there.  That academic experience having been only the beginning for many such people leads for many of them to further complexity and complications as to what should be done in circumstances such as are now in Syria with the regime caught in self – destructive mode and turning on its people. 

What is to be done?  By this writing, and because there is no consensus imperative, the Russian regime itself is readying or at this time shipping supplies and war machinery; arms and so forth, to Syria to deter and possibly abate a U.S. military strike before it might even be arranged, the facts here beg the question “What are you doing?”  Such an interlocution should be allowed with the Russians compelled to answer as to what their intentions are in supplying arms, anti – missile and anti – aircraft, anti – personnel and anti – rebel devices and equipment in the scope of an outdated and obsolete purpose of constant efforts to “secure the near abroad” and so forth, and I paraphrase here.  Such thinking, with the mobility of armies and air forces, and other factors is completely, obviously archaic and un – called for at this time, though these arms dealers, reason that in the deployment of their war apparatus they will probably handle forty percent of the issues against Western powers and influences they need to, and there will be so much conventional destruction that Westerners will tire of the conflict and pick up and go home:  An example of pre WWII political thinking that needlessly and eventually caused so much damage.  This is what has the State Secretary and U.S. president so involved in promoting their plans to protect and preserve what’s left of our allies in the places involved and their peoples, if not a good amount of the infrastructure in the country and other valuable attributes it has despite its not being, for example, a place like Israel, a modern functional country.  Lebanon is probably a more functional place than Syria at this point and our U.S. president does not want to be chief executive as well of the Middle East.  Absolutely not, and the talk of it, even anything provoking such impressions and thinking about things this way is nonsense and hogwash.