Syria is a Distraction From Our Moral Choices At Home

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/world/syria-distraction-our-moral-choices-home



We are on the brink of a tragic decision to strike Syria, because, in the dubious logic of the President, “a lot of people think something should be done,” and American “credibility” is at stake. He and his secretary of state assure us that the strike will be “limited” and “surgical.”

The use of chemical weapons against Syrian citizens is abominable, and if Assad’s regime is responsible he should be treated as an international criminal and pariah.

But have we learned nothing from our mistakes in the past? Time and again over the last half century American presidents have justified so-called “surgical strikes” because the nation’s “credibility” is at stake, and because we have to take some action to show our “strength and resolve” — only to learn years later that our credibility suffered more from our brazen bellicosity, that the surgical strikes only intensified hostilities and made us captive to forces beyond our control, and that our resolve eventually disappears in the face of mounting casualties of Americans and innocent civilians — and in the absence of clearly-defined goals or even clear exit strategies. We and others have paid an incalculable price.

We should instead be testing the nation’s resolve to provide good jobs at good wages to all Americans who need them, and measuring our credibility by the yardstick of equal opportunity. And we should strike (and join striking workers) against big employers who won’t provide their employees with minimally-decent wages. We need to commit ourselves to a living wage, and to providing more economic security to the millions of Americans now working harder but getting nowhere.

[dkf]

1. Good job = more enlisted to fight unending wars.

Just think of how many jobs we could create in middle east regional war.

Nothing else seems to work.

[Downwinder]

2. Japan is thinking of dumping the poison water at Fukushima

into the ocean. Shouldn't we be talking about sending cruise missiles to let them know that we do approve of poisoning people? We probably have enough boots on the ground there already to effect a regime change.

We have seen with the tsunami debris that what goes into the water at Fukushima ends up on our Pacific Coast.