SHAME
Hey, hey ...
Nobody likes horror. February 1944 it was the discovery of Joe Mullins' headless body in the woods right behind my grandparents' E. Caroline Blvd home. May 1945 newsreels from Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau. My Lai. SSGT Robert Bales. Newtown. Currently, Syria’s use of gas against defenseless people is as horrible as horror gets, 429 little children murdered. Knowing about it ruins my year and where I am in life. Thinking about it again this morning saddens my day and my week. Even so, nothing to do but keep breathing and sadly going my way.
If the president thinks an American attack on Syria will leave fewer than 429 children dead he is deluded. If he thinks an American attack on Syria will dissuade Syrians on either side from further use of the weapon of horror, he is mistaken: witness Germany after WWI, in international relations, “punished” is not taught a lesson and dissuaded, but infuriated and hatred stirred to determination. I am a citizen of a nation that instead of maturing with experience is incapable of learning from experience, observation, or history, or even of listening, hearing; a citizen of a nation with government -- of the people by the people and for the people -- that believes it is government above the people: frankensteinsmonster.gov.
If the president thinks an American attack on Syria will leave fewer than 429 children dead he is deluded. If he thinks an American attack on Syria will dissuade Syrians on either side from further use of the weapon of horror, he is mistaken: witness Germany after WWI, in international relations, “punished” is not taught a lesson and dissuaded, but infuriated and hatred stirred to determination. I am a citizen of a nation that instead of maturing with experience is incapable of learning from experience, observation, or history, or even of listening, hearing; a citizen of a nation with government -- of the people by the people and for the people -- that believes it is government above the people: frankensteinsmonster.gov.
At some point, long past, it becomes not only about how children are killed but even more about how many children are killed. How many Iraqi children are dead because of Shock and Awe and its decade of atrocity? How many Afghan children? We hold the moral high ground? Us? The chat acronym would be AYFSM? There was a moment in our history when moral outrage was so palpable that it brought a president down and changed the nation -- at least temporarily: Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?
It isn’t so much that we will be moral cowards if we do nothing to Syria (not for Syria, to Syria) as it is that if we do something or even anything we will make everything worse, everything, worse, part of a crumbling globe. That’s a moral conundrum. Moral conundrums require not certitude, but Prudence, Sophia. Her name is Wisdom.
My chief horror of the moment is reading that in Arkansas a SWAT team shot to death a 107 year old man. A man alone in a house, and known to be alone. Armed. Confused? Maybe in his mind he was John Wayne cornered by the bad guys.
Gas of a different kind would have put him to sleep. Or Time. Or a glass of warm milk. Or bourbon. Or a dish of prunes. I pray that in his own mind he somehow died a hero.
TW+