Ambivalent no more

From Facebook: We bomb Syria after Syria bombed Syria to show Syria not to bomb Syria, but we still won’t accept Syrian refugees after we bomb Syria for bombing Syria? Makes no sense, does it?

I’m piecing things together as I read them—yes, they’re mostly from Facebook and no, most of them are not substantiated but there’s enough for concern. Something stinks. We bombed a Syrian airfield at a cost of about $55 million in bombs. But the air field was virtually empty except for a few planes under repair. At best, we pockmarked the runways and even that is in doubt because a day later Syrian planes took off from the same field to bomb the same town that Assad had gassed earlier—causing our retaliation. So we wasted in the area of $55 million. Well, not wasted—somebody profited. Namely a company called Ratheon that manufactures the bombs. And guess who owns Ratheon stock? The president who didn’t divest himself of his investments as promised.

There are strong indications—like an empty airfield—that Syria was warned. The logical thread? From the White House to Putin to Assad. Too many hints to ignore, but Congress goes placidly amidst the haste (or is it waste?), sitting on its collective butt. This country is doomed to go up in smoke if someone of moral courage doesn’t step up and demand that Ryan and McConnell instigate independent reviews of the bombing and a lot of other suspicious things. Who? John McCain once seemed the man who spoke truth as he saw it, yet he denounced the nuclear option and then voted for it. No one dares oppose Ryan, McConnell or the party. We are effectively trapped unless we make our voices effective. Joe Kennedy is young, but he sure bested Ryan on medical care.

A frightening side effect for those who thought our so-called leader showed compassion for the children who were gassed in Syria: reportedly he is now considering a nuclear option for North Korea—this time a literal nuclear option, not a symbolic one. Other than being generally offensive, I can’t figure out what North Korea has done recently to threaten us. There’s always the possibility that the president liked the shock and awe, when his air strike was new and believable, and wants an even bigger bang.

Where is the media in all this? Going along with the justified, successful air strike line, that’s where. We don’t have a media voice to speak the truth. Yes, we have some effective and cogent columnists, but I suspect few people read columns—they read headlines. We need media people in the trenches to remember their commitment to speak the truth loudly and clearly. Too much is at stake.

And this is why I was awake at three in the morning, with a sense of terror for my family, my friends, and my country.