The Vanishing Line....

 

 

"Walk softly and carry a big stick has morphed into something quite a bit different these days..."

Well, if this is not an exciting ending to a suspense filled event. Okay, that was just a joke. Not as much of a joke however, as our once great nation now appears to the thugs of the world. Someone had used Photo Shop on a picture of our President riding his bike with his helmet on. The Photo Shop addition to the picture was to put training wheels on the bike. That one picture is worth a thousand words in describing how the Syrian gas issue has been handled by the United States.

 

Let me first say this - Bashar al-Assad is a bad actor - a thug of the highest degree. He has shown himself to be a heartless dictator who has no problem killing his own people, regardless of sex or age. That being said, he is no different than a dozen other thugs who rule over nations of innocent victims. The world has become very, very good at not turning the other cheek, but rather having a blind eye to witness modern day genocide. We simply don't care. We all say we do, but we really don't.

President Clinton has said more than once his biggest disappointment while being president was not going into Rwanda and helping to stem the tide of that mega genocide. With all do respect sir, to that I say "CRAP!". The 1994 genocide evolved like a slow motion train wreck. The press knew about it - heck, it was on the news most every night. President Clinton on the other hand, chose to go after a minor league thug named Slobodan Milošević in the Balkans. Why? It was easier. We could drop bombs from 10,000 feet and it looked like we were doing something. Did Milošević commit war crimes? Absolutely. However, this guy looked like a Boy Scout compared to what the Hutus did to the Tutsis. In that short three months in 1994, while sitting in the comfort of our own living rooms, we could watch over 1/2 innocents being tortured and killed in the most inhumane way.

The United Nations and the United States has also done an excellent job of doing nothing while over 100,000 have died in Syria over the past two years. Where was the "red line" back then? Death is death, whether it is caused by conventional or chemical means. Instead of doing something meaningful at the get-go to save lives, we fill up the air waves two years later with war talk. The end result was this - our bluff was called, and the "red line" vanished. The Russians are now in charge of the situation, as once again President Obama voted "present".

Facts are stubborn things. Our "haughty" Secretary of State told Assad he wanted the weapons turned over or destroyed in a week or two. Syria is rumored to have over 1,000 tons of this icky stuff. It will take years, maybe decades, to destroy these munitions safely. The Russians don't want it back - by treaty, they are still destroying theirs (as are we with ours until 2023). Because of our dithering, the news has reported Assad's storm troopers have dispersed the chemical inventory to maybe fifty new secret locations. Locations which could be compromised and looted by really bad guys such as Al-Qaeda or the Muslim Brotherhood.

This is a hot mess and getting hotter. If I could have drawn up a scenario which was a bigger "cluster", I don't think I could. This will haunt us for years. Our "leadership" in the world has now been totally exposed. Once feared and respected under Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, we are now seen as nothing more than a paper tiger. When the world cries out for leadership and strength, all it is receiving is genocide and terror. Welcome to our brave new world in the 21st century. May God have mercy on us for committing or simply witnessing our growing inhumanity to each other.