War! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing....

Well it's not like anyone cares or will listen, but here's my opinion on the Syria situation.

My opinion pretty much echos the great and amazing US Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders.  To paraphrase what he said, "Assad gassing his own citizens is a tragedy and violation of international law, but, I need to know what the pressing US interest is for getting involved in the long Syrian civil war."

Amen, Senator.

From what I've seen, I believe Assad did use chemical weapons on his own civilians.  I also believe that is terribly terribly wrong.  I also dont know why the US would do anything militarily about it.

I would prefer we go with sanctions or diplomacy or something else.  Yes, it IS offensive, but it's an internal issue.  It's not like the First Gulf War, when a sovereign nation was invaded by another.  Nor is it like Afghanistan, whose government, the Taliban, was harboring the perpetrators of an attack on another nation.  This smacks just too much of Bushie's attack into Iraq: a place we, as a country, dont need to be.  It's internal, we dont need getting involved.

I know, I know, in Libya, we did limited air strikes and helped overthrow a tyrant.  But in that case, the rebellion was well on it's way to winning, we helped it along.  I dont see this proposed attack as helping a rebellion, I see it as retribution for the use of chemical weapons.  And I dont think we, as a country, need to be doling out retribution on countries for things they do internally (pot calling kettle black, and all that).

If Assad had used chemical weapons on say Israel, or Lebanon, or Turkey, or Iraq, well then that would be a different story, and I think I'd be supporting this action a bit more.  But as it stands now, I'm not really in favor of doing this.

AND, having said all, I have this to say to all the people out there who shout: The parties are no different they're both the same.

Remember this, when Bushie was taking us into Iraq, ALL the Republicans in Congress were in lockstep behind him.  And anyone, ANYONE, who breathed a word of any kind against going to, was called unpatriotic, unAmerican, told they were scum and should leave the country if they didn't like it (usually by the Republican politicians and their media propaganda wing (Faux News).

Compare that to this time.  You can see in THIS NEWSPAPER ARTICLE where the Senators stand on this issue. There are 11 Democratic Senators on board (in addition to 9 Republicans) but there are 5 Democratic Senators leaning no, and the rest are undecided.  In the House, you've already got 15 Democratic members against supporting it and only 9 currently supporting it.

My point being, bear in mind, under a Republican president, the whole entire party is for the war and if you're not you're un-American, but under a Democratic president, it's party is split and no one is being called unAmerican for their opinions.  That, my friends, is one glaring example of how the parties are different: Republicans are 'you're with us or you're against us'! and the Democrats are "let's think this through and everyone's entitled to their own opinion."

And this is just one case where it's like this.  Think marriage equality, or abortion, or voting rights, or any other myriad of topics and the party's stances are the same as the Syria intervention.

Yet another reason I'm proud to be a Democrat.

POLT