Syria: Drums of war deafen us to history's lessons
So here we go again, government and media revving up the people for another bloody conflict.
“This is not Iraq, this is not Afghanistan,” says U.S. President Barack Obama of the plan he is taking to Congress for a cruise missile strike against Bashar Assad’s Syrian regime, as the United Nations rushes to determine if allegations of chemical weapons use are true. The “military action,” not an act of war, Obama insists, is “proportional, it is limited, it does not involve boots on the ground.” The United States must respond if the superpower is to be perceived as the “world leader” it is.
The Republicans appear to be coming around and so, too, are important bastions of the press. There’s a Washington Post article circulating on the web these days entitled “9 Questions about Syria you were too embarrassed to ask.” It’s a sort of Syria-for-Dummies guide and something of a formula for the newspaper (it follows an earlier “9 Questions about Egypt” published in mid-August) and yet another symptom of just how dangerously glib we have become in the way we talk about war.
The Post article offers dinner party conversation points. It talks about lobbing “a few cruise missiles (that don’t) cost us much,” not even intended to “turn the tide” of the Syrian war and “not supposed to.” It provides a summary who’s who, chucks in a Syrian pop video for good measure — hell, what’s any news today without a YouTube music video? And then, a throwaway easily ignored, it suggests that sometime down the road, when once again no one in the U.S. or Canada actually gives a toss, “the world could maybe send in some peacekeepers.”
How have we reached the point where such a monumental political decision is marked without protests in the streets but governed by articles measuring their success in user hits and likes and social networking shares? Let’s pause to think just a little about the astonishing language that, for instance, the president’s ally Nancy Pelosi used as she gunned for the “few cruise missiles” that will apparently have “limited” effect. (Really? Have we learned nothing from 9/11?)
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http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2013/09/06/syria_drums_of_war_deafen_us_to_historys_lessons.html