Don’t get me wrong, I abhor the use of chemical weapons, it is an extremely brutal way to kill someone. It also amounts to terrorism by its effect on the people in the area. As well as just being a downright shameful way to do the dirty business of war. I am uncertain of any non shameful way to kill, but I’d think face to face would be it…

Anyway, now we are poised to attack Syria, somehow, in some fashion, presumably with long range missiles to attack infrastructure. Only after weeks of saber rattling and UN investigations, and hoohaw, and talking heads doing what talking heads do.

At this point, if I’m a Syrian official, I’d be evacuating key installations, going underground with key assets, and burying that which I might miss after it would be blown up. So if and when we finally do go ahead, and stick our damn noses in somebody else’s business yet again, and bomb them… Well, the joke really will have been on us. Congratulations you just bombed empty buildings and killed 3 people! Umm, but they will claim that x amount of assets have been eliminated, and run the death toll up, so they can say how terrible “we” are.  You can count on that.

This whole scenario reminds me of the North Korea thing that we just went through, making a bunch of noise, posturing up for full effect, then nothing. The key difference between us and North Korea, is we are likely to follow through with an attack! I do not have a better solution to offer, I wish I did, even so, no one would likely listen to any sensible approach anyway. At this point there has been too much time invested in us wagging our fingers, and saying if you do “this” we will do “that” and no one seems to realize that following through with any attack at this point is merely to save face.

And for what? I am not sure there is any hope in the next several generations, there will be any appreciable gains in anything that would resemble moderation in the Middle East. I don’t know how to fix it, I dare say no one does, but if these people are intent on killing each other for whatever transgressions real or perceived, I know not how to convince them otherwise.

Bombing empty buildings sure as hell is not an answer. It isn’t even saving face. It is actually doing what we were just berating North Korea for threatening to do. Although we aren’t talking nukes here, I suppose that is a key difference, but the principle is still the same.

The way I understand it, what led up to this whole thing, is the mishandling of what amounted to mild forms of protest. Some youths were arrested for anti regime graffiti, then some were killed while incarcerated. Which led to growing protests because of the of the situation as well as economical woes being a factor, and the failure to punish those that were responsible for killing the kids in detention really heated things up.  Then the whole thing escalates to what we see today, with both pro and anti gov’t sides committing atrocities, with neither side willing to back down, and try to make amends. In this instance it isn’t hard line Islamist’s oppressing the people, it is just  regular old authoritarian hard ass gov’t thugs that refuse to accept any input from those they govern (or anyone with an outside perspective). I can see why these people are mad, I would be too. You can’t have a gov’t that treats its civilians in such a manner as to murder them for graffiti, and you can’t expect people not to react in a bad way as a result. But for it to go this far, with this much death and destruction, simply because the gov’t could not admit that mistakes were made, and punish those responsible, is reprehensible. No gov’t should be so far out of touch, that murdering its people can be seen as acceptable. Then to go so far as to use chemical weapons?

Now, we have decided that we need to be involved. We can’t be tasked with being the World Police. If we are going to act in that respect, then it needs to be done with unilateral support from many other nations, and not rest on our shoulders alone. Oh…and France. Big friggin whoop.

…and if we are going to act in a situation like this, wouldn’t it be better not to announce it for several weeks in advance? The way this whole thing has played out is just surreal from my perspective, none of it makes sense in that it never should have come this far to start with, let alone, now it is somehow our problem to deal with.

If anyone has a solution to this problem, that won’t actually be adding layers of complexity to a bad situation to begin with, I’d love to hear it.