Our Leaders Are Fools

I have heard way more than enough about President Trump's reaction to the Syrian poison gas attack on Syrian people which included children. The overall establishment attitude towards Trump's unleashing of the Tomahawks seems to be something like, "way to go dude!" Even someone like Fareed Zakaria who is normally fairly mature responded by gushing that Trump is "now the President." Militarism and Capitalism have become this country's true religions and they are followed with the blindest of faith.

Here is a question that I have yet to hear any of the mainstream media or their expert dunsels ask; "How many cruise missiles does it take to bring a dead Syrian child back to life?" The truth of course is that launching missiles is a destructive act not a humanitarian one. Launching missiles will not convince a single member of Isis to be nicer, nor will it turn Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin into a humanitarians. The truth is our national tantrum will accomplish nothing positive. If it does anything at all it will reinforce Assad's position and play into the hands of Isis.

It seems our national tendency is to do the most stupid thing possible in response to the evil actions of others. What should we do to combat Isis and Assad? Actually the answer to that question seems rather obvious to me! I find it hard to accept that our political and media leaders are as pathetically inept, myopic and unimaginative as they appear to be. They utterly predictable. Like the one trick ponies they are they have only one answer, blow shit up!

For a fraction of the cost of our military blundering we could provide profound humanitarian aid to the Syrian people. We could do it the countries around Syria. We could likely do it in areas of Syria itself. Instead of building forts to protect ourselves from local people and prisons for local people like we have been doing, we could build defensible safe harbors for them. Humanitarian aid could defeat Isis. Drone attacks on weddings and funerals never will. Providing food, shelter and medical care to ordinary Syrians might undermine Assad but missile attacks will strengthen him.

Our military could perform a positive role in defending humanitarian outposts. Instead our unfortunate soldiers do the empire's dirty work and become the hated symbol of our national death cult, the religion of militarism.