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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCHARLES BLOW: "Using dead children as a mask for America’s militaristic instinct=REPUGNANT"
Heres my question for every member of Congress and every member of the global community: What message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no price?
What price should be and how it must be paid is the question here. The bombs-or-nothing argument that many proponents of United States military action have taken rings hollow. There is a mile of distance between grieving for dead children and avenging those deaths through military force.
Furthermore, one can simultaneously express sorrow for the dead, particularly the children, and resist direct United States military intervention. This is a false choice that uses the dead children as a mask for Americas militaristic instinct, and one that I find repugnant.
In fact, the everyday rhetoric in support of an American strike becomes evermore expansive. This is no longer just about punishing Assad for using chemical weapons. Its now about sending a signal and shoring up American credibility at the risk of war spreading throughout the region. So creeps the mission.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/07/opinion/blow-remembering-all-the-children.html?ref=charlesmblow&_r=2&
Kolesar
(31,182 posts)magical thyme
(14,881 posts)And now is 200 missiles plus bombs dropped from planes.
Z_I_Peevey
(2,783 posts)but horrible, and forbidden, when they do not.
Why are photos of dead Syrian children everywhere in the media, and why were photos of dead American children at Newtown off-limits?
Bombs and guns and profits, that's why.
But people are rejecting this blatant propaganda push, and that is a good thing.
frazzled
(18,402 posts)Same paper, same editorial page, different opinions. Let's remember that Kristof was one of the first mainstream columnists to question the Bush administration's intelligence on Iraq, and he broke the Joe Wilson story. So let's not question his credentials (for those who like to kill the messenger even as they are the biggest advocates for not killing the messenger when it suits them).
As one woman tweeted to me: We simply cannot stop every injustice in the world by using military weapons.
Fair enough. But lets be clear that this is not every injustice: On top of the 100,000-plus already killed in Syria, another 5,000 are being slaughtered monthly, according to the United Nations. Remember the Boston Massacre of 1770 from our history books, in which five people were killed? Syria loses that many people every 45 minutes on average, around the clock.
The rate of killing is accelerating. In the first year, 2011, there were fewer than 5,000 deaths. As of July 2012, there were still only 10,000, and the number has since soared tenfold.
A year ago, by United Nations calculations, there were 230,000 Syrian refugees. Now there are two million.
In other words, while there are many injustices around the world, from Darfur to eastern Congo, take it from one who has covered most of them: Syria is today the world capital of human suffering.
Skeptics are right about the drawbacks of getting involved, including the risk of retaliation. Yet lets acknowledge that the alternative is, in effect, to acquiesce as the slaughter in Syria reaches perhaps the hundreds of thousands or more.
But what about the United Nations? How about a multilateral solution involving the Arab League? How about peace talks? What about an International Criminal Court prosecution?
All this sounds fine in theory, but Russia blocks progress in the United Nations. Weve tried multilateral approaches, and Syrian leaders wont negotiate a peace deal as long as they feel theyre winning on the ground. One risk of bringing in the International Criminal Court is that President Bashar al-Assad would be more wary of stepping down. The United Nations cant stop the killing in Syria any more than in Darfur or Kosovo. As President Assad himself noted in 2009, There is no substitute for the United States.
So while neither intervention nor paralysis is appealing, thats pretty much the menu. Thats why I favor a limited cruise missile strike against Syrian military targets (as well as the arming of moderate rebels). As I see it, there are several benefits: Such a strike may well deter Syrias army from using chemical weapons again, probably can degrade the ability of the army to use chemical munitions and bomb civilian areas, can reinforce the global norm against chemical weapons, and a more remote prospect may slightly increase the pressure on the Assad regime to work out a peace deal.
If youre thinking, Those are incremental, speculative and highly uncertain gains, well, youre right. Syria will be bloody whatever we do. ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/08/opinion/sunday/kristof-pulling-the-curtain-back-on-syria.html?ref=nicholasdkristof
Cooley Hurd
(26,877 posts)frazzled
(18,402 posts)Try reading the entire article at the link and say something more useful. Nic Kristof is the premier journalist on issues of human rights abuses and social injustices. He's won 2 Pulitzer Prizes for it and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize lifetime achievement award. Having traveled to more than 150 countries to investigate poverty and human rights abuses, I think his word should carry some weight.
Cooley Hurd
(26,877 posts)Why don't YOU offer something more useful, Skippy...
brentspeak
(18,290 posts)The US Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable couldn't ask for a better-positioned "liberal" to promulgate their agenda.
DirkGently
(12,151 posts)... so long as it's not the shirts we bloodied ourselves.
Where are the endless heart wrenching videos of drone killings and the devastation that remains in Iraq?
sibelian
(7,804 posts)And, you know, kind of a downer.
Dragonfli
(10,622 posts)Dragonfli
(10,622 posts)I say we need to bomb these countries because they will not understand any other language, we should start by posting pictures of the tragic victims in places like Fallujah and Palestine, hundreds of dead children can easily be placed on loop by the altruistic MSM, then strategically target military bases and air support facilities within their borders in order to reduce their ability to commit such atrocities while the UN turns a blind eye!
The two countries that use chemicals that result in horrible deaths the most (far more than Syria) and have the highest civilian death tolls due to such use luckily happen to be countries we have a great deal of intel on.
We know exactly where to strike in the United States and Israel to punish them for setting an example that "it is OK to use these horrible weapons of chemical warfare that burn victims flesh to the bone and cause horrible deformities to multiple generations of innocent children".
It is regrettable if any innocent US or Israeli citizens die, but they are not the targets so would merely be "regrettable" collateral damage, The US should not using them as shields by placing it's bases near residential areas the way they do.
Somehow it seems like an absurd idea now, I don't know why, same logic, same horrible deaths caused by chemicals (quite a few more even), but for some reason I think the hawks will abandon their flawless logic when the players are different ones....
DirkGently
(12,151 posts)America is exceptional, in that it has the bigger guns, and we say we are exceptional.
Might makes right. Still.
This is the limit of our evolution as a species.