BRATTLEBORO — President Bashar al-Assad of Syria certainly deserves the world's condemnation for using chemical weapons against his own people. But before the United States responds militarily, let it be established beyond any reasonable doubt that he did in fact do this. And then why not let NATO and the United Nations Security Council decide how to respond?
In the meantime, it is troubling to imagine what steps the United States is considering to take on its own.
Based upon previous interventions, we might be talking cruise missiles, Depleted Uranium munitions, cluster bombs, phosphorus, napalm, or an abbreviated version of “shock and awe.”
I find it offensive that President Obama is arguing that unless we do something, America's “credibility” will be challenged.
What credibility? Our credibility as global “peace maker?” Global policeman? Champion of the world's huddled masses longing to be free?
Our credibility as a country that spends over half of its discretionary income on the military, more than the rest of the world combined?
Our credibility as a country with 1,000 military bases overseas to safeguard American corporate interests as well as the military-industrial congressional complex?
The credibility of a country that invaded Iraq - not in self-defense, as required by international law, but because Saddam Hussein supposedly had weapons of mass destruction: chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons?
We now know that Saddam Hussein did not have those weapons, but the shock-and-awe attack happened anyway, despite the protests of 15 million people from around the world demanding the war be called off.
During that war, the U.S. military used thousands of tons of depleted uranium (DU), a weapon of mass destruction, a chemically toxic and radioactive nuclear waste product; as a result, in the city of Fallujah from 2007 to 2010, more than half the babies born had birth defects - that's just one example.
And according to the scientific secretary of the European Commission on Radiation Risk, those DU weapons have absolutely destroyed the genetic integrity of the population of Iraq.
And is there a statute of limitation on referring to the war in Vietnam? In that war, the United States dumped 20 million gallons of chemicals, including Agent Orange (a Monsanto product) between 1962 and 1971. In 2012, the Red Cross estimated that one million Vietnamese had disabilities or health issues related to Agent Orange.
Currently, the CIA is involved in drone attacks in Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan, mostly targeting al-Qaida operatives. Anyone presumed to be a “terrorist” is fair game, even U.S. citizens. And anyone “not with us,” according to former President George W. Bush, is with the terrorists.
Accurate figures are hard to come by. But according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism at City University in London, England, between June 2004 and September 2012, U.S. drones killed between 2,562 and 3,325 people in Pakistan, of whom 474 to 881 were civilians.
Intervening militarily in Syria's civil war could do far more harm than good. But a strong reprimand from the United Nations Security Council, along with serious economic sanctions for the Assad regime, might be called for.