What Have We Done In Syria?

More than a year ago I reported this:

The US's top military officer has warned Syria it could face armed intervention as international outrage grows over the massacre of women and children by tanks and artillery in Houla.

General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said that following the UN security council's condemnation of the slaughter – in which more than 100 people were killed, many of them children – there needed to be increased diplomatic pressure on Damascus. But he added that the US would be prepared to act militarily if it was "asked to do so".

Shortly thereafter I reported this:

Syrian intelligence agencies are running torture centers across the country where detainees are beaten with batons and cables, burned with acid, sexually assaulted, and their fingernails torn out, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on Tuesday.

The New York-based rights group identified 27 detention centers that it says intelligence agencies have been using since President Bashar al-Assad's government began a crackdown in March 2011 on pro-democracy protesters trying to oust him. 

Then I  made this comment:

How do you people sleep at night knowing that you have it in your power to save millions of people and don't? 

We should be ashamed.

I also pondered this dilemma:

When we see brutal dictators murdering their helpless citizens and we just stand by saying "we must be non-interventionists" it makes me want to puke.

No, I'm not if favor of being the world's police force.  But you tell me, when does discretion equal cowardice?

I called for debate over this issue in February of last year:

Circumstances like those involving Syria give all of us a chance to test the metal in the non-interventionist approach against cries for help from people unable to defend themselves from brutality, genocide and ethnic cleansing, the realities of life in other parts of the world.

I made it perfectly clear that we are not the police force for the world and shouldn't engage in every battle that pops up.  But what have we done?

We did nothing.  We sat back and did nothing, fearful of the backlash of the "non-interventionists".  And now where are we?

Glenn Beck has lost his mind over the possibility that we might now be ready to arm a group of rebels that even President Putin says are a bunch of cannibals.  And at least one of them, the leader of a rebel group, was taped cutting open a dead man he had just killed and eating his organs.

Why are we now left with such terrible choices?  Why are we now left to stand in shock as crazed men kill other men and eat their entrails?

Why are we now left to stand in shock as a dictator uses chemical weapons against innocent women and children?

Why?

The answer is exactly what I warned against.  Inaction, timidity, hesitation all allow the shocked among us to stand and watch a man brutally beat his wife until she has no choice but to fight back on her own with equal viciousness and in the scene we allow to play out in front of us for fear of involvement she becomes as brutal as he and the blood bath sickens us.

Decisiveness and action are lacking in America when it comes to standing up for life and liberty of ALL human beings.

We watch African countries become drowned in blood.  We watch good people starve to death so that kings and despots can rape the riches for themselves.

We watch as religious zealots behead women, kill children, slaughter Christians and mutilate and murder in the name of their prophet.

And we wonder why we end up victims of powerful money interests, feel powerless among reckless plans for world domination and don't seem to be able to make a difference in the world anymore?

That's because we shun the John Waynes of the world in favor of the Harry Potters.  We've turned into a bunch of "low T" socialized nanny boys more concerned about the security settings on our I-phones and Facebook accounts than running into burning buildings to save innocent lives.

Hell, even the firemen in some cities spend more time posing for calendars than their predecessors would ever have allowed.

Am I saying we need to rush into Syria now and arm the rebels?  No, because we have let it become a stinking mess.  We can no longer pick a viable winner in this battle to support and Beck is right, we can't back the terrorists who have co-opted this conflict. But we should learn one lesson.

Soft talk and caution gets you killed in a brutal world. 

What we've done in Syria is perhaps have waited too long. 

May God forgive us.