Image Source: Reuters
It’s difficult to be frivolous in writing some days when there are so many reminders that the world is rife with cruelty and relentless suffering. Most recently, my thoughts have turned to Syria. I feel a need to acknowledge this most recent chapter of human tragedy, but I have no greater aspirations to push an agenda, or to advocate my own incomplete and imperfect solutions. I have no answers to offer. Fewer people do than most of us would suspect.
Innocents have died. Innocents have always died. Yet it is the will of the world to quietly tolerate the pain, and to spin itself into restrictive knots to curb the tides of rash reaction. And who could blame the world? We’re all so weary of war, so thirsty for the shallowest semblance of peace, and so skeptical of the intentions of clumsy giants who trample villages and farmlands into rubble in the pursuit of hollow abstractions.
Surely something should be done. Or maybe it’s time we averted our gaze just long enough to let the clouds settle into an unkind, but distant memory. The consequences that await us down either path are grim.
The constant of human savagery weighs heavily on us all, regardless of whether we ever cared enough to stop and take notice. The history of humankind has never been without an instance of people treating other people badly. And yet we persist despite our frailties. So maybe there’s hope. Or maybe there isn’t. I have no answers to offer.
On days like today, I despair in the face of so much human stupidity. Maybe one day I’ll have the strength again to hope with earnest sincerity.
Here’s to the promise of a better tomorrow — whenever that day may come.
Poor Syria. I feel bad for the innocents living there. I really do. But I’m just not sure if killing a bunch of our own men in their place is really “fixing” anything. We just got our troops back from war and now we are going to send them right back out? It feels heartless for me to say this, but why not just let the Middle East sort it out for themselves. We can’t police the entire world.
I had commented on another blog about how I understand the desire to respond to such a horrific act. The thing is, unless the Americans send in special ops to assassinate *just* the bad guys, any other response will result in the deaths of civilians and American soldiers. That won’t make things any better in Syria. Or anywhere else, for that matter. And “supporting” the “good” rebels always ends up biting the US in the ass.