Back to Syria (Yet Again)

So I know I haven't been this vocal about the political scene in quite some time, but I feel that this issue regarding chemical weapons and our government's response deserves more time and comments as it is such a charged issue.   Its been a while since an issue such as this has had such far reaching implications.  What started as a simple protest in Syria has turned into a civil war lasting more than two years with both sides committing almost equally grave atrocities and involved in a stalemate that doesn't look like it will end any time soon.  And then there is the issue of President Ass(ad) using chemical weapons against his people.  Our initial fumbled response by our dithering president was to immediately react, bomb Syria, and show them who is boss.  Then he backed down figuring he could pass the buck to Congress should they decide to allow him to go in a do some bombing.  Now, the latest in his back-pedaling fiasco, O(bomb)a has decided to put the decision for a military strike on hold in an attempt to work with the Russians to take the chemical weapons away from President Ass(ad).  Allegedly, the Syrians have agreed to let a group of "monitors" come into their civil war zone and take their chemical weapons away from them.  You heard that correctly, the Syrians have volunteered to hand over their chemical weapons to the Russians to have them destroyed.   Are there no alarm bells ringing in any body's head?  From a country that just a week ago denied that it even had chemical weapons to this week where it will hand over their chemical weapons to be destroyed, does nothing sound a tad bit fishy?  But it gets better.  The Russians had this idea, the long time ally of Syria and perhaps one of their greatest supporters.  Don't get me wrong, anything that will get chemical weapons out of the hands of Ass(ad) is a fantastic thing, but will we get all of them?  To me, this reeks of subterfuge.  I can not fathom how such a devious government as Syria would collect all their chemical weapons and just hand them over without question.  This is all just political games that are being played.  I guarantee that Putin, with the thought that we might actually go in and bomb his little friend, gave his friend Ass(ad) a call, and pretty much said, "Let's placate those bastards in the west, give them "all" of your chemical weapons (ha ha ha), and we will have the U.N. destroy them all."  I would say, why don't you gather all the weapons and Put(in) your Ass(ad). 

 

As I said, if this actually works and all the chemical weapons are removed and destroyed (which I highly doubt they will get all of them), then the world will be a little better place.  Yet that still leaves that country in the middle of a civil war, albeit without the chemical weapons that can be used against their own people.  Yet, I don't see how this will all work itself out.  There are still the Arab nations speaking out against this initiative saying that it does not stem the flow of blood from the people in that country and it does nothing to stop the civil war.  No offense, its not our civil war.   I would much rather see things resolved peacefully, yet we are far past that point with almost no hope of returning to it anytime soon.   I would say that while we are "gathering" the chemical weapons and the world is distracted with that task, we send in an elite seal team and take out the Ass(ad) at the head of Syria.  If that doesn't stop the blood shed, then perhaps we send in a few more seal teams with elite sniper divisions and start picking off anyone in power.  If you remove the head of the best, the body will writhe for a time but eventually it will wither and die.   If we really want to show our true power, we must do it with subterfuge and deviousness, just like they do.  Pick off their top people and send the message, "this is the beginning, take heed and end this civil war lest more people get sniped."  OK, so that's probably not the morally correct thing to do either, but to me its more acceptable than bombing them with the great possibility of inflicting collateral damages.   Switching my train of thought before I wrap this up, it is amazing to me how little people care about the political environment and what is happening around the world.  Out of all my friends, most would say they don't care and don't want to discuss it.  Yet, this issue alone, if not handled correctly on the world stage, could lead to nuclear weapons being pointed in all the wrong directions.  Iran is watching to see how this all plays out.  You know what they are seeing?  A President of the United States of America who can't make a damn decision when it comes to foreign policy in this case.  Israel is watching as well.  So is China and the rest of the world.  What are they seeing?  A country that used to hold the greatest military and political power wavering in the face of an indecisive leader.  I only hope that O(bomb)a makes a decision that he actually stands behind for once and stops painting the picture that we are a weak country.  We still have the greatest military in the world, yet without a strong leader, what is the use?  The next few weeks will sure be telling in terms of the world stage, and I only wish that more people my age actually cared about what is going on, not just for the sake of the lives being lost, but also in terms of what it means for our children and the world that they will grow up in. 

Potty Training Advances

Despite the fact that Obama is still pushing for a "limited air strike" against Syria for their use of Sarin gas against civilians, I still have a son at home who is working on potty training.  To be perfectly honest, I care a little more about our son mastering his bowel movements than I do about whether or not we bomb Syria.  I have made my opinion clear on that matter, we shouldn't bomb them, and from the news reports, it seems that the majority of Americans are in agreement with me.  So until something new gets reported, I will revert back to the more important matter at hand, ensuring that our son is out of diapers before his little brother or sister is born.  There is nothing my wife and I want more than to have to deal with only one child in diapers at a time.  And the good news is, it looks like our son is getting closer to that goal.  Over this past weekend, he began making improvements on making it to the potty in time to pee.  He is learning how to hold his muscles a little longer and when it finally comes time to pee, pushing that pee out into his little potty.  Soon, we will probably be moving up to the big toilet.  But for now, his little portable potty is much easier, especially when it has to happen quickly.  Yesterday at day care, our son went pee three times on the big toilet, a large improvement from the previous week where he went only once towards the end of the week.  It seems those weekend days where he runs around the house and yard naked are paying off.  Originally we noticed that he would rely on the pull-ups or diapers to catch any pee or poop he had whereas now he can actually control it a little bit more.  The whole notion behind having your child naked actually makes sense.   When you see them start to pee, you can tell them, "hey, your peeing, lets go to the potty!"  When they are in a diaper or pull-up, however, you have no clue when they have to go and as such, can't notify them when they start to urinate or poop.  (I don't know, to me, urinate has a much better ring to it than defecate does, just saying).  Yet, despite all these improvements, there was one funny little incident over the weekend where our son didn't make it to the potty and we didn't even know about it until we went to go outside. 

 

You see, our son was playing in our mudroom off the kitchen by himself before we went into our backyard.   About to put on my sandals to go outside, I looked down and noticed a little yellow puddle in one of my sandals.  Perhaps he thought my sandal was a potty or perhaps it just worked out that way, but the puddle was only in the sandal, no where else.  While a tad disturbing because I where those sandals every day, it was immensely funny at the same time.  Luckily, they are Addidas sandals and I was able to just wash it right off with the hose.   In any case, potty training is moving along quite well and I am hoping that within the month our son will be completely potty trained, at least during the day time, and his diapers can be put aside and saved for the next little one to come along.   So speaking of our next little one, possible names are completely eluding us thus far.  Yet, it is still a little early to be deciding on what possible names we should use when our child is born.  I remember that we didn't even start considering names for our son till about 2-3 months before birth.  At this point, we are still 4.5-5 months away, still a good chunk of time to make a decision.  Its kind of funny, but we are both fixating on boys names right now, perhaps a portent as to what might actually happen or just a deep seated hope that perhaps we will have another boy.  To us, it doesn't matter what we have, boy or girl, as long as our child is healthy.   As I mentioned before, we will not be finding our the sex of our child before birth as we did with our first.  We still maintain that it is one of the few true surprises that one has left in this world and we will capitalize on that to the fullest.  So for now, we wait, we ponder names, we work on potty training with our current son, and I chip away at putting our son's new room back together.  It was much easier working on his first room when I didn't have to worry about making too much noise after a certain hour.  With him going to bed at 630/7, it severely limits the amount of time I can spend on his room.  When I get home in the afternoon/evening, I don't want to run right up and start working.  I would rather spend time with our son, playing with him, than working on his room.  In any case, I have till Thanksgiving to get it done, so I am not overly worried yet, just a little.  Till tomorrow, be well and do a nice deed for someone else. 

Response To Comments

I had a few comments yesterday from my post on Facebook that linked my blog about Syria and not getting involved.  Before I begin my response, let me first state that both comments were from good friends of mine whose opinions I respect, yet still must respond to.  The first comment is as follows (and yes I am copy and pasting it without the explicit permission of the commenter): "Who is to hold Syria responsible for using Sarin gas on it's civilians? Do we let them just get away with their apparent disregard for international law and human rights? If so, what type of message does that send, and how will that message be interpreted by the rest of the world?"  If you want to talk about who is to hold Syria responsible, I thought that we had a United Nations (albeit a defunct U.N.) that was supposed to handle matters such as this.  It should be up to them to create a unified response to the chemical attack with the agreement of all nations who are members.  The fact that certain nations don't want to respond, i.e. Russia, possibly China, should not mean that we bypass them and act on our own or in accordance with 1 or 2 other countries.  Further, if we want to talk about holding countries responsible for chemical attacks, the worst one in modern history, the 1988 attack by Iraq on a small Kurdish town that killed over 3,000 went unanswered and the most that happened as a result was finger pointing.  Iran did it, no Iraq did it, no Iran.  Nobody felt the need to go in a bomb Iraq at that time or for that matter impose sanctions on them, in large part because there were a number of developed nations who supplied them with the chemical weapons they used in the attack.  What has changed since then?  We did not set the example then, so why set it now unilateraly or bilaterally or however you want to look at it.  Syria currently has not ratified the treaty or whatever you will on the use of chemical weapons, therefore, it can do what it wants.  A horrible position to take, yes, but if they have not agreed not to use chemical weapons in any means, who are we to fly halfway around the world and make them agree not to use them.  Granted, I agree that any use of chemical weapons should be banned world wide and the fact that they were used by Syria is a tragedy, but there should be a unified response to them.  I can hear the arguments already to my statements.  "Should we then follow the rest of the world and not be the bigger nation, the one who holds life and humanity a step above others?"  If that is the argument to my statements, then what about all those instances in Africa, crimes against humanity in which thousands of one tribe are raped, mutilated, and killed by another tribe that go unanswered and largely un-noticed by us?  If we put our foot into every instance in which a crime against humanity were committed, then we would be spread so thin we could be walked all over.  So 1400 Syrians are more important than a far larger number of tribal Africans?  Do we pick and choose which crime we answer to?  If so, then perhaps we should look at where our underlying interest are.  (And just for the record, my comment about Obama was not in reference to him getting us into any other war, I know he didn't start the issues in Iraq or Afghanistan, but he did bomb Libya.)

 

Now on to the second comment which reads: "Alex - I'm standing next to you and I'm beating up my little brother, wailing on him. Poor kid was pretty scrawny to begin with, but now I'm just stomping on him. You wouldn't do anything? What about the Jews during the holocaust? Should we have "let them figure out Germany." ? ?"   In regards to the second part of the comment in which Germany and the Jews were dredged out of history, I think I have answered that with part of my response to the first comment in which I state that if we are to respond to one act of genocide, use of chemical weapons, are crime against humanity, then we should respond to all of them.   Now on to the first part of the comment.  If I were standing next to you, Anthony as you were pummeling your little brother, would the correct response be to cut off your hands and your feet so that you could not pummel him anymore?  Or maybe I should take your head and slam it into the ground so that the thought of pummeling him were eradicated from your brain.   Neither response improves the situation.  By cutting of your hands and your feet, I am showing your little brother that the only way to solve a situation of violence is with more violence.  If he sees that and learns from it, what is to say that he doesn't react in a similar way at some future point in time.  Yes, by going in and bombing certain tragets in Syria that hold the capabilites for carrying out future chemical attacks we could potentially save thousands more.  But we can't bring back the dead.  No matter what we do, the suffering and loss already felt by those related to the victims of the chemical attack will not be healed by us bombing Syria.  Sure, we might make them feel better for a while, but it won't take away their loss.  What we are doing is acting out of revenge for lives lost.   Is violence answered by violence a way we want to teach our children to grow up?  You say that I am one of the most caring people you know.  Well, I do care about human life, but not the expense of more human life.  I would rather not have my son grow up in a world where the only response is a violent one.  We see where that has gotten us so far.  It has not decreased violence in the world, but added to it.  By re-inforcing that violent acts should be acted upon with more violent acts, we are only perpetuating violence in this world.  Is it a tragedy that those Syrians were killed with chemical weapons?  Absolutely, I would never say anything otherwise.  But for us to respond militarily is not the answer.  Do I have the answer?  Absolutely not, but I would advocate non-violent measures anyday over violent ones.   Reverting back to earlier in this paragraph, and just briefly before I wrap this up (I am sure temporarily), say their were people standing near by when I went to go cut off your hands and feet to save your brother with my samurai sword that I keep strapped to my back (hypothetically of course) and happened to injure them as well.  Would that "collateral damage" be acceptable if it were to save your brother from a pummeling? 

In the end, I do care about human life.  It is sacred, should never be taken by another, and we should always look to protect others.  That being said, we can't act violently against others in the wake of violence.   I do not have the answer, but for me, the answer is not going and bombing Syria.  That will solve nothing and in the long run, probably create more issues than there were to begin with.  Of course we can live with it because we are half a world away and as long as we take out chemical weapons, who cares.  There are much larger issues at stake than just taking out revenge for lives lost.  With that, I leave it in your hands.