Interventionism Gone Mad

By: Daniel Nardini

Lawndale News Chicago's Bilingual Newspaper - Commentary We have seen this picture before: First there are the sanctions. Next, comes the United Nations’ resolutions. Finally armed intervention either directly or indirectly. We have seen this with Iraq and recently with Libya. Now I am seeing the same thing with Syria. I am certainly not for the horrendous mass slaughter of civilians by the Syrian government, but with a record national debt plus our society falling apart and our physical infrastructure in decay we as the United States of America should not be getting into a fourth war either directly or indirectly.

Intervention in any war must serve a purpose for the national security of any country. The Libyan civil war did not serve the purpose of the United States. We do not really know who the rebels are even now, and now that they have seemingly won we have no idea what they will do. It seems that the United States had really gotten involved in that civil war for the oil and for getting rid of a guy who has been a thorn for a long time. But in order to get rid of Gaddhafi the U.S. government spent over U.S. $1 billion to do it. I seriously doubt that we as a nation will get much return for this (worse, this may come to haunt us in the not-so-distant future. Remember the Afghan mujahadeen we aided against the Soviets in the 1980’s? They came back as the Taliban and Al Qaeda and the rest is history).

The Syrian government is far more entrenched, and if the U.S. and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) should start a shooting war with Syria then we had better have the money for it. Oh yes, we don’t! Getting rid of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad may prove to be a whole lot harder. Can the United States sustain a fourth war to get rid of someone his own people cannot get rid of? Not to say I am for Assad—he has been in power for too long. But what rule, what moral ground, and what reasoning does the United States have in getting rid of a dictator somewhere not in our national security?

Our country is broke. We are fighting two wasteful wars at present (maybe three already. Not sure what we are doing in Yemen). We have almost ten percent unemployment officially. Our society is fracturing, and our economy is in tatters. We are still very much in the midst of what is being called the Great Recession, and we may fall into the worst of it again because of the stupid policy of the current presidency. For this country, unless it is a life and death fight, we have no more business engaging in any more wars. Intervention as a policy must end. What does it take to show the folly of the White House getting us into yet another war?

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