About helping people who are being brutalized.
Years ago in 1967 I was an "O" operator for Ma Bell. One of our jobs was picking up emergency calls and directing them to the right agency especially from coin telephones cause the caller didn't need a dime to call if there was an emergency. This was the only time we were required to listen into the call and record it from beginning to end. Otherwise listening to calls would get you fired. It was a good paying union job, so no one disobeyed that rule. One time I got a call from someone who was witnessing a woman being beaten by a man.
I connected the party to the police department. The caller asked the police dispatcher to stay on the line with her until the squad car arrived. Of course I had to stay on the line with them. Well, to make a long story short, when the officers sorted everyone out, they arrested the woman and let the man go. The girl who had reported the abuse was stunned and let the dispatcher know how disgusted she was, which is how I knew what happened cause I had to listen to what was said and record it. Now, I discussed this with some of the other operators and they told me that maybe she was arrested to protect her until her husband sobered up or ran out of steam for whatever had riled him up. There were no shelters then for abused women in that area and apparently no law to protect the victim without a lengthy court process. It still seemed wrong.
However, in those years many cases of abuse and people turning the other way or even blaming the victim, have been part of the fabric of being human. Schools can't seem to handle bullies and the consequences have often been tragic. Women, children and animals are assaulted, hurt and even killed on a regular basis, yet our society is unable to deal with it. Just in my neighborhood we had a situation with a woman, who had a ten year old boy and a dog. Both the boy and dog were abused by her. We, who witnessed this called child services and animal control several times only to have the boy and the dog returned to the mother in the end. Finally the landlady, who rented to the woman, evicted her and we don't know what happened to any of them, the child especially. We can't seem to do anything to help victims it seems because we have some ethical problem about not minding our own business. More than that there are few laws protecting the victims and many laws protecting the rights of the abusers.
What I'm leading up to is, what happens when it's a nation? Just how far should we go to respect their national boundaries and "mind our own business?" We seem to be unable to sort this out. We invaded a country who did nothing to us, killed their political elite and proceeded to kill their citizens and after a decade decided to leave and leave behind our mess because of some ginned up accusations of weapons of mass destruction, mushroom clouds, blah, blah. Yet, we sit back and watch genocide after genocide occurring in countries with oppressive regimes and seem to be able to do nothing. We can't upset this nation or that nation that has ties or does business with them so we all turn the other way and do nothing.
Yes, I'm talking about Syria today, but it could be another nation tomorrow. How can we sit back and watch this? What can be done that isn't a military invasion? Or, how much of a military intervention would be acceptable? Why can't the UN or other league of nations come up with guidelines for righteous interference in the affairs of another nation whose leadership has gone rogue and who have started brutalizing their people? Imagine if there had been such guidelines in place in 1933, we wouldn't have had Nazi Germany, the Holocaust and WWII. Why in the twenty-first century, can't we come up with something that is civilized and honorable in dealing with these situations?
I'm really stymied and yet I find it horrifying to have to sit back and witness this over and over and still be able to do nothing.