It's interesting how selective the United States can be about weapons of mass destruction given that the U.S. continues to be responsible for widespread and ongoing death and destruction from its own chemical and nuclear weapons.
The gas that Obama-Kerry are blaming on Assad appears to have killed somewhere between a few hundred and a thousand or more Syrians.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, the locals are left to live with the radiation hazard created by American depleted uranium (DU) shells and bullets. D.U. is known to cause cancers, birth defects and stillbirths and D.U. contamination is believed to persist for decades, if not generations. D.U. dust particles can be inhaled and then embed in the lungs.
And American chemical weapons are still killing in Vietnam and could be for centuries to come. Agent Orange, generously air delivered as a defoliant, is estimated to remain lethally effective for up to six centuries. It gets in the soil and in the ground water. It too causes cancers, birth defects and stillbirths. Hang in there, Vietnam, only 500 years to go.
Where was our righteous indignation and call to arms when Israel blasted Gazans with white phosphorus rounds and bombs? The Liberal leader of the day absolved Israel for that and one of his former aides now demands that Syria be attacked.
How do we explain our indifference to the cluster bomblets that litter southern Lebanon, taking lives almost daily, that were fired into that area by Israel in the hours prior to ceasefire?
This is not an apology for Assad. He's a brutal, murderous shit in a region full of brutal, murderous shits, among them a number we consider friends. This is about us and it's about our hypocrisy that undermines any credibility we have in denouncing Assad and calling for strikes against Syria.
When do the Vietnamese, the Iraqis or the Afghans get to retaliate against the Americans for the use of WMDs against them in their homelands?
9 comments:
.. undeniable facts - hypocrisy in action - dead weight media - government comfy with situational ethics ..
.. You're dismissed Mr Harper, Mr Baird .. found ignorant & frothing at the mouth ..
Assad is a brutal dictator and he must go. No question about that. However, how Syria poses national security threat to Americans? I don't get it.
It is not clear that it was Assad or rebels who used the chemical weapons.
It looks Americans and Israelis have God-given rights to use lethal chemical weapons but for the rest of the world it is a crime against humanity. Interesting!
Mound, you are guilty of thought-crime. Your dredging up of history shows a faulty memory. You only think the atrocities you post enumerates happened. Ask any American. They have never done anything wrong.
Just think of the devastion if the Middle East were to get the upper hand against North America. Could we say it would be our "just deserts"? We North Americans need to stay home and question companies like Monsanto. Provide a living wage for young families, the ill and retired people living way under the poverty line. That doesn't mean we don't protect ourselves. It means we take a breath, discard mashed potatoe brains and begin the activity of communication...the art of discourse and take care of our own.
One thing I most admired in the Liberal Party of the past was its even-handed, balanced treatment of foreign affairs. It usually took a nuanced approach while so many countries went black or white.
Today's Liberals adhere to Ignatieff's "more muscular foreign policy" approach as though the world really needs one more country itching to go for its guns.
Canada has been plenty willing to go to war when that was necessary (at least until Afghanistan) but we have also done a great deal of good by retaining our credibility as independent and an honest broker when that, not bombs, was needed for resolution and peace.
I sense a substantial Likudnik faction within the Liberal Party that is obsessed with Muslim conflict but is utterly indifferent to truly mass suffering in Rwanda, Congo, Central African Republic, or the Horn of Africa. Apparently those conflicts didn't threaten Israel.
Among the articles about Syria I found this one amusing and relevant to MoS' line of argument:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/09/06/should-russia-attack-colombia/
Points out that Colombia is fairly equivalent to Syria, has a civil war, an officially acknowledged policy of attacking its citizens with chemical weapons, and Russia would have far more credibility as a disinterested party in Latin America than the US does in the Middle East. Only one problem: It's an insane idea. Much like attacking Syria.
exactly. The african atrocities have gone on for decades( and yes for more like hundreds of years) but I say decades as if the USA is just recently found their conscience.Rwanda, nothing, dafur, hardly much, but yeah someone starts up in the middle east...and they have to charge in, bombs dropping, rhetoric flying over the media airwaves. It sickens me.
and yeah the americans are guilty of their own atrocities but no one dare mention that:P
Americans probably would be ecstatic if everyone died off in Africa. They would move in like a dog after a bone and yum, yum,oh so close to the middle east.
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