Now, before anyone reads the title and thinks I have no concern for the atrocities that have happened in Syria, please know that I am appalled by these things. I have read or heard about chemical weapons, napalm like bombings of schools and the violence going on even between neighbors. I am appalled. I was nearly in tears on my way in to work Friday morning at just after midnight. They were talking about a school that had been bombed with something like napalm. They talked about the burned and injured children and you could hear their screams in the background. They talked graphically about the dead children they saw at the school. I was sickened by the story.
So, the President came up with the use of chemical weapons as their litmus test of whether he would seek involvement of the military or not. Are chemical weapons bad? Absolutely. Is it better to kill someone with a gun? Absolutely not.
Today, I was listening to NPR this morning on my way into work, and they were having a interview with one of the military commanders who was involved in the decision making about what kind of strike this would be. He kept referring to it as a degradation as well as a deterrent. Now, I understand what a deterrent is. If I start bombing you, you will stop because you don't want to be bombed. It was the degradation part that confused me, until he explained it.
With degradation, the idea is that the US bomb key stationary bits of military that will cause Syria's war effort to be less effective. Essentially, degrading the Syrian armed forces until they cannot maintain a war effort. Now, this makes sense. At least if you are fighting what would be considered a traditionally "accepted" war.
But, Syria is not fighting this kind of war. They have chosen to use unaccepted forms of military action, mainly chemical weapons. Which, I might remind you, was the line that President Obama told the Syrians not to cross.
So here is the problem with the military action that the US has decided it should engage in if Congress approves it. This military commander stated that use of naval based cruise missiles and their equivalent used on military aircraft are really only good for stationary type targets. He then admitted that they would not be effective against chemical weapons as these are not very stationary type weapons.
If the line for us to get involved was chemical weapons, if that was what the President felt was the atrocity that it took to involve us in Syria, why are we not going after the chemical weapons? Why are we instead going after all the traditional weapons? Do we think if we take away the traditional weapons, they will stop?
I don't think so. The Assad regime has already used chemical weapons on innocents. They have already used them on women and children. If we take away all their other options in terms of weapons, the only ones they will have left to use are the ones that we specifically want them to stop using.
So Mr. President, if your NSA buddies are reading this (which I hope they are), maybe they will bring this to you so you can see the error in this thought process. You are encouraging them to continue using chemical weapons, not degrading them or deterring them. You will have them backed into a corner like a caged animal. And what does a caged animal do when backed into a corner and feels threatened? They fight. They fight with any means necessary. They fight until they cannot fight anymore. Mr. President, you are going to be fighting a caged animal. If you are going to do that, take away the weapons that you are most afraid of them using first.
