The Unclad Soul

I am struggling more and more every day to understand the Syrian humanitarian crisis. I sympathize with those fleeing trying to save themselves and their families from the horrors happening every hour in Syria, horrors that have gone on far too long. It doesn’t matter to me whether they are refugees or migrants, they are escaping for their lives and any hope of a future, and they deserve a safe place to live. Have you seen Syria? Who can live there now? It is a place of utter devastation and ruin. Why aren’t the Arab nations, including Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates doing more to help these people? Why aren’t we? So far, according to NPR radio, we have taken in 1,500 refugees. That’s deplorable. I know we have given money and arms and the Syrian catastrophe is a complex situation but surely we can do better to help these desperate people. European nations have so far, except for Germany, been stubbornly indifferent to the mass of refugees risking their lives to g...

The crisis in Syria is basically a civil war. It is a power struggle between conflicting ideologies. It started as an uprising against Assad’s dictatorship and a small faction attempting to have something like democracy without knowing what that really meant for them. Now, however, it has turned into something else. The rebel forces are apparently a jumble of insurgents including members of Al-Qaeda. So if we go in there and do whatever, blow up some of Assad’s military assets, or even topple the regime, do we want terrorists taking over things? How would a gang of Muslim extremists turning the place into an unbending theocracy be better for the Syrian people? Is President Obama simply trying to save face, hoping to keep from looking weak after making previous threats against Assad’s use of chemical weapons? Even with all of the horror that has gone on, there was no real threat to the U.S. Assad had never made any movement against our country (and neither as the world know...

President Obama’s decision to respond to the horror and conflict in Syria makes me think of that line in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” where one of the characters says, “This is as strange a maze as ever men trod.” How do you watch children and women and people of all ages being gassed to death, writhing in convulsions and gasping for air, and not want to immediately do something about it? And yet, how will throwing a few bombs at Assad’s air force do anything to change the dynamic or stop the carnage? I believe President Obama is a man who truly wrestles with all of this. He obviously is counting the political costs, but I do believe he is a man with a conscience. I think he wants to do the right thing, but I’m not sure he knows what is right in this instance. His “red line” comment was careless and not well thought through. It put him in a spot where he is forced now to back it up in some way. But let’s not pretend the Congress and especially all of the Republican/Tea ...