I'll write this now because I know that once the war of choice and aggression against the sovereign country of Syria starts, there will be too much noise, to much jingoism, too much fear, too much "shock doctrine" shock-and-awe.
For many years now I've been shocked and horrified at the ease with which many people talk about military interventions in other people's countries.
Putting aside the fact that a lot of these military excursions are based on lies and propaganda at the behest of the military industrial complex as we saw with the Iraqi war, what I've found truly horrifying is the utter lack of understanding about what it really means to go to war by a lot of people who casually comment about surgical strikes, and limited interventions, and strikes meant to send a message, and such nonsense.
It's truly amazing how the MIC propagandists release their talking point to all the TV media outlets and "cognitively infiltrate" our living rooms, one household at a time making sure we learn the correct terms of the military actions, which we then repeat (parrot?) verbatim.
To the rah-rah jingoists I always ask a very simple question: Would you be in favor of launching "surgical" strikes if you knew for sure that the country we are attacking (of her allies) were going o reply in kind, one-for-one, which means missiles raining on our cities.
Without fail, I get this perplexed look, as if I had just said something so ludicrous, improbable, and incredible that it could not crossed anybody's mind for one second.
But I insist in an answer... "Think about it carefully; if you knew for a fact that a country you were about to attack in a war of choice and aggression--a country that has in no way taken any step or action to threaten you in any way--had the capability to retaliate with equal force in our own cities, would you still support an attack?"
That's Okay if they don't want to answer; I'm not going to press the issue because if they answered that perhaps in that situation they would think twice, then I would call them a (okay, I removed the F word) coward. And who wants to get into that kind of heated exchange over something so serious.
Syria is no Libya or Iraq. Syria has some serious backing by Russia, Iran, and other countries. Right now we are being held in low esteem around the world because of the outrageous and illegal spying by the run-away for profit corporate-controlled NSA; the newest revelations is that like two-bit thugs we even wired the United Nations, spied on their internal communications, and broke into their computer systems.
In this climate we are going ahead and complete the 30-plus years-old neocom agenda to the last word of the playbook. Nothing was going to interfere with that plan...
To those who are parroting the MIC lines they're internalizing by watching CNN, MSNBC, PBS, FoxNews, CBS, ABC, NBC, et al, talking casually about "surgical" strikes, and "punishing Assad," I'll ask: If you knew that the sovereign country we are about to attack in a war of aggression had the capability/backing to retaliate in kind, in our "homeland," would you still support a "surgical strike."
If the answer is yes, then BRAVO, you are legit, a true humanitarian to the core. If the answer is no, or you equivocate, then that can't only be seen as cowardly.