Syria

This week, that's been the main thing I've been thinking about. And from what I read, the consequences range from "We're not even sure we're going in yet," to the destruction of the world in the form of a nuclear World War III. I read some writers who may be overly dramatic. Or, maybe not.

And the thing with Syria has been going on a while now. I remember something mentioning it on the Daily Show back during the presidential election. I remember John McCain calling for intervention in Syria. I was just discovering my more libertarian views and I remember asking Dad, "what do we do when a country is committing crimes against its own people? Should we still remain non-interventionist?"

Dad wrote back, "I'm not 100% sure what the trigger is. The US is certainly inconsistent. This is a very dangerous road to go down because it isn't always clear who the good guys are and who the rebels are. Often these kinds of things come back and bite us and also our going in to kill people who are killing people doesn't sound like it is necessarily the most moral thing to do."

That is far more clear to me today than it was then. In fact, the more we learn how muddy the whole situation is, the more clear it is that going in is a bad idea. And that none of the "news" we've been delivered is necessarily accurate.

The way America puts it is that we are on the side of rebels against a regime who is willing to slaughter their own citizens and use chemical weapons on them. And because of the chemical weapon use, we will send warships with cruise missiles to take out their stockpiles of chemical weapons (If war was declared... or whatever we do to start it these days), along with considering sanctions, no-fly zones, and a lot of other war-like things without necessarily putting troops on the ground. Britain, France, Turkey, and numerous other countries back intervention.

In reality, we don't even have proof that the regime was the one using chemical weapons. UN inspectors only just decided that chemical weapons were actually used. It seems stupid to think that the regime, which was winning against the rebels, would use chemical weapons when UN inspectors were in the area, just in time to call down a mass of countries to interfere on the rebels' behalf. The rebels say the regime did it, the regime says the rebels did it, and both sides point fingers at each other. Also, the rebels have strong Islamist and terrorist links, and we are talking about aiding them and giving them weapons? Even the conflict in general isn't so clear. The rebels also kill people. It's not just a civil war made up of a distressed country against their government, but of two factions, neither having been reported as giving a care for civilian life.

And do we think that bombing chemical weapon stockpiles we not affect civilians at all? Somehow nobody will be hurt?

Unlike a few of our past wars, I think we are getting more and more disillusioned. We know this wouldn't be a fight for our freedom, and even the claims that we are going in because they were behaving badly, because we need to spread freedom and democracy by force, are not just being taken for granted.

Twitter has a trending hashtag called #NameObamasNewWar. A popular one is "Operation Nobel Peace Prize." Others pun on the name of Syria with "Operation Joker: Why So Syrias?" and "Operation Syriasly?" The Twitter account claiming to be the press account of hacktivist group Anonymous is calling people out for just tweeting, saying, "Operation American's are going to tweet and not much more." Other tweets they posted talk about how it would be better to aid the refugees and actually take action... instead of just exploding social networks, like we are.