I wrote last time about Syria. The whole issue actually makes me want to throw my hands up in the air and scream and yell, "How do you think a missile strike will be an isolated event? How do you think the rebels are any better than the government? How do you think this incident is the one that deserves your wrath but have let so many other killings and abuses pass unnoticed? Why do you think you have the authority to draw 'red lines' without Congress and that you can order strikes without Congress?"
I have never hated Obama. I never liked him, but I don't hate him. I do not like Obamacare, but this, this thing with Syria, really really bugs me. It's the first time that I've been like, "It's only 2013? We have a ways to go."
That said, I'd like to talk a little bit about interventionism, which is our foreign policy. Oh, not the the discussion between if we should sanction or not, invade or not, police the world or not. I'm solidly on the "or not" bit. We shouldn't be the police. Nobody appointed America is governor of the world and I don't think God said, "This is my country, they are the bestest and get to say what's what." Americans are a little on the self-centered side. We see only Americans as being important when it comes to world matters, like everyone else is somehow less of a human than we are. Doesn't really matter to us if others die unless Americans die, in which case it's a tragedy. I'm not saying it isn't, just that our standards of tragedy don't tend to involve anybody else's death, and then it's only a tragedy if we have to look at it or the government tells us so. Like these chemical weapon deaths.
I read this morning by
Ron Paul, "I agree that any chemical attack, particularly one that kills civilians,
is horrible and horrendous. All deaths in war and violence are terrible
and should be condemned. But why are a few hundred killed by chemical
attack any worse or more deserving of US bombs than the 100,000 already
killed in the conflict? Why do these few hundred allegedly killed by
Assad count any more than the estimated 1,000 Christians in Syria killed
by US allies on the other side? Why is it any worse to be killed by
poison gas than to have your head chopped off by the US allied radical
Islamists, as has happened to a number of Christian priests and bishops
in Syria? For that matter, why are the few hundred civilians killed in
Syria by a chemical weapon any worse than the 2000-3000 who have been
killed by Obama’s drone strikes in Pakistan? Does it really make a
difference whether a civilian is killed by poison gas or by drone
missile or dull knife?"
It's a good question.
Anyway.
Basically, I came to say that I think we are very single-minded when it comes to intervention. Is there any way we can help people in other countries without initiating an unprovoked attack? Can we help people peacefully? I've read, and I don't have the links for this, that Jordan is taking in refugees from Syria. They are helping, probably more than we ever will in this situation.
And I think America should do that. Not necessarily Syrian refugees, but be that open place we used to be.
My dad has an interesting take on immigration. No guns, no fences, no border police. Let 'em come in. But we're not going to give them anything. No free schooling, no Social Security, no welfare, nothing. And end law of the land. So the people who want to come would just be coming for what they get of freedom, not for any handouts. You want to make it here, you have to earn it. And that's kind of cool. Rather historic-sounding.
For example, we should be open to allowing in people leaving their own countries for lack of freedom. Take the case of Germans who want to homeschool their children. Homeschooling was banned in 1938 by Hitler, "all the better to indoctrinate you, my dear." And, oddly, that rule is still in effect and still being enforced. We've had a case where a
German family is asking for asylum to homeschool their children as they want to raise them Christian. Makes sense to me. However, so far, our government has said, "You don't face religious persecution because the law applies to everyone, not just Christians." Which seems to be a somewhat silly way to defend that.
Also, in Germany, a family's house was stormed by
police and social workers wielding a battering ram, who then took their children away by force.
I think we should let these people come into America. And if people in other countries need help, let our private, non-government aid groups could go and help them. Not our shooting missiles into their country with the chance that it will spread the targeted chemical weapons. That doesn't seem like much help.
Of course, America isn't as much the bastion of freedom that people used to immigrate to. Maybe we'll be looking for somewhere to claim asylum.
