9/11/2013

It’s become a little bit of a tradition, I suppose, for me to evaluate where we are every September 11th. I thought about this earlier today and realized, I don’t have anything very profound to say this year, the 12th anniversary of the worst attack the United States has suffered in my lifetime. Not that anything I ever say is all that profound.

However…

The day before, President Barack Hussein Obama addressed the nation on the current Syrian crisis. I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about this.

The Syrian crisis is complex (as any international conflict is) and I’ve only taken a cursory look into what’s happening. The only thing the government and the media have really focused on is the fact that the Syrian government appears to have used sarin gas in a suburban area killing something on the order of 1400 Syrian citizens. I don’t know all that much about sarin gas either, but it’s apparently quite nasty. Foaming at the mouth, bleeding from places you should never bleed from, altogether a quite horrible death.

The United Nations has outlawed the use of chemical weapons and for very good reason. Some have made the argument that dead is dead and we don’t get that worked up when thousands are hacked to death with machetes. We should, in fairness, but chemical weapons are especially nasty.

But strangely the U.N. seems reluctant to enforce this law when it comes to Syria. The reasons for this, too, are complex. Syria is a Russian ally, and Russia is boycotting any action to be taken as a result. It seems odd to me that Russia is single handedly powerful enough to prevent the U.N. from enforcing international law, but I don’t pretend to understand all of the complexities here.

Long story short, since this isn’t really a post about Syria, is that John Kerry seems to have accidently stumbled across a possible diplomatic solution, and Russia and Syria so far seem to be on board. I hope that pans out, but I find it slightly amusing that John Kerry, former Vietnam war protester, who in 2013 seems to be all for bombing the fuck out of Syria, accidentally found a possible peaceful solution. Again, this isn’t really about Syria, so I’ll leave it at that.

The reason I bring up Syria, and more importantly president Obama’s speech, is because as I was watching it, I was uncomfortably reminded of President Bush and his administration’s arguments for the invasion of Iraq. We all know how that turned out.

As I said, the Syrian conflict is complex. The Syrian government seems to be tyrannical and despotic, but from what little I’ve learned about the rebels, we really don’t want those assholes to replace this guy. I read a story just yesterday about how one of their leaders shut a boy in the face in front of his mother for supposedly blaspheming Mohammed. By the way, if any Syrian rebel leaders happen to be reading this FUCK MOHAMMED AND FUCK YOU YOU SICK FUCKERS. TAKE YOUR FUCKASS BLASPHEMY SENSITIVITIES AND STICK THEM SO FAR UP YOUR ASS IT COMES BACK OUT YOUR SHITTY EARS.

Sorry. That kind of shit pisses me off.

The point was, I hope history isn’t repeating itself. I hope we’ve learned something from the past 12 years. I feel for the Syrian people, but at some point we have stop going to war.