There is a red line; there is no red line. There is a red line?
We support the non-ISIL rebels who may be working with the ISIL rebels sometimes or sharing supplies in fighting against the Syrian military who is emphatically backed by Vladimir Putin of Russia, who we then ally ourselves with after the Paris Bombings.
So, the United States, Russia, Brits, and France work together to bomb our allies, the non-ISIL Syrian rebels and also the ISIL rebels, and civilians, yes, thousands of civilians have died just since our efforts to save lives after the Paris Bombings.
We save lives by bombing and literally running out of cruise missiles to launch into Syria, which may or may not be hitting ISIL targets; we have to rely on people on the ground to locate the exact locations of ISIL targets sometimes, and we have a policy not to have boots on the ground.
So, we kill people, including ISIL members, people who ISIL hired to drive trucks for them; those people lacking in food and water and willing to do anything because war has deprived them of any way of making a living, and a bottle of milk for that truck driver’s child might cost two hundred American dollars, and so he is an ISIL terrorist because the war as prosecuted by the Syrian, Russian, American, British, French, Arab, Non-ISIL Rebels, ISIL militants, and Hezbollah, because this war against terror and against the West and against the civilians and against Islam, this war may not end for another decade (like Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya and Egypt) and this man feels he has no choice but to die for his family at the wrong end of an American bomb aimed at ISIL terrorists whom this man hates along with so many other people for ruining his life and his nation.
Get it straight, Obama’s war, which will soon be Clinton’s or Sanders’ or Trump’s or Cruz’s (Cruz, who will happily carpet bomb the whole area as he collects on his Obamacare), this war against ISIL is a war for who knows what.
See my Madaya, Syria video here:
It is 1968 all over again, and Nixon promises to end the Vietnam War. He goes in and expands it; he toasts North Vietnam’s chief supporter, Mao Zedong; he bombs Laos and Cambodia, killing millions, possibly, who knows, who cares outside of Asia?; he negotiates and negotiates for years for a palatable peace.
The Vietnam War is finally over in 1974, after six additional years of war, costing the lives of millions of more people, with the same result that would have happened if the French were allowed to simply surrender the nation in 1954, after Ho humiliated them at Dien Bien Phu.
2015; in the wake of the tragedy of the Paris terror killings, the United States again comes to France’s defense. Heroic. Obama expands the war, allying the United States with the enemies of our allies and the allies of our enemies. But instead of Nixon swearing to end the war, we have both donkeys and elephants vowing to soldier on through the night, and the night might be a few decades long.
Why decades? Because powerful people backed by much more powerful military forces like Russia (who backs the Assad regime) and the United States (who backs everyone except for ISIL) will not negotiate in good faith. They will not quit their warring until they feel they have to. And as long as Assad has the backing of the two largest military forces in the world, he will not negotiate in good faith.
So hold no silly hope for the negotiations. As in Vietnam, war is the negotiation, and the negotiation process costs little to Assad, Obama, and Putin, personally.
Meanwhile, the people starve to death, they die from malnutrition, from drinking dirty water, and from bombs and missiles. Hundreds of thousands are at risk of dying over the next months, as the war has trapped millions (how do you evacuate an entire nation?) in cities being besieged by Assad and in towns where there is just nowhere else to go, and in places where they may not be able to limp or crawl away from because the land is mined terrifically.
Dozens of people are starving to death in Madaya. That does not sound like much, but consider that Madaya is only one grain of sand on the beach. Madaya just so happens to have been able to get a couple of photos on the internet of children trying to eat leaves. This is Ethiopia 1985-level starvation in a nation that was a middle-class country just several years ago.
None of our presidential candidates have ever lived through war as a civilian. They cannot understand the reality of “carpet bombing” as Ted Cruz salivates it. Ask a Vietnamese in Hanoi what it was like to have John McCain and others drop bombs on you as if laying carpet on a floor.
Both Clinton and Sanders are committed to continuing the fight against ISIL without telling the American people that no one possesses a proper vision of what that means — does that mean we support the rebels and the government against each other, creating a neverending war, knowing that war itself is what swells the ranks of ISIL with desperate, confused, and alienated young would-be soldiers and terrorists?
I was terribly disappointed in Bernie. If he is willing to launch another 20,000 cruise missiles into Syria, like Obama recently did, then he better tell us how we “win” without killing another million people. Vietnam, please stay in our suppressed memories!
The Western allies yesterday committed to providing billions of aid for Syrian refugees and war victims. Why? They know the negotiations are likely futile, and the war may last another decade. The people of Syria need hundreds of billions of dollars of aid, not billions. But the billions makes the West look good, as our militaries ask for hundreds of billions of dollars to reload the bomb bays.
Please donate to the World Food Programme. If warring factions, including the U.S. and Russia, allow the WFP to fly food aid to desperate people, they will. Until then, these tiny organizations (like WFP) scurry about like ants giving people a bit of food and medicine here and there, while the big militaries destroy most means of survival.
