A lot of
brave cops and innocent people got killed before cops learned to take as much
time as necessary to secure the premises, bring in the SWAT team, turn off the
utilities, clear the neighborhood, engage in negotiations, and secure the
release of hostages.
Only when all
else fails and only when delay increases the risk of harm to the hostages, do
professional police officers fire in the tear gas, toss the flash-bang
grenades, and storm the premises.
Innocent people and brave officers may still die, but at least decisions
to use deadly force are made in a reasoned and deliberate manner and only after
all other alternatives fail.
Would a law
enforcement model work? Would it be a
smarter war policy? We will never know
unless we try it. Shouldn't we take the
time to make a better case for intervention to ourselves, our allies, the
United Nations, and, most importantly, to the poor people of Syria and others
in the Middle East?
We have the
technological ability to bomb the Syria people with audio and video compact
discs, take over their airwaves, and spam their email and Facebook accounts,
not to spread false propaganda, but to reassure them that they have more to
fear from Assad and his cohorts than from us.
We should
demonstrate our respect for the antiquity of the Syrian culture and reassure
the Syrian people that we want to avoid harm to them and their institutions.
Relying upon
international and Islamic law and appealing to their common sense, we
should ask the people of Syria to stand aside from the criminal who has seized
power over them and to let us help them to free themselves from his domination.
Wouldn't it
be money well spent to offer a substantial individual reward, generous
financial aid, and the elimination of economic sanctions to the surviving
Syrian government that deposes the tyrant?
Wouldn't it have been a far better investment than the billions we will
waste to destroy the Syrian national infrastructure and to then rebuild it?
Should push
come to shove, the armed elements of the U.S. Defense Department continue to be
the mightiest military force in history and the most effective in the world
today. Surely, the brilliant military planners
in the Pentagon can conceive and create a myriad of plans and actions to keep
Assad on the ropes, personally, until such time as he gives up, his own
henchmen sell him out, or when a few brave volunteers have to go in and
"arrest" him, and what he was doing, taking him into custody, dead or
alive.
Building upon
a smart, instead of a stupid, war policy, wouldn't the United States (and the
United Nations) be in a better position in the future to cope with violent
dictators and unstable nations? Shouldn't
we at least consider the alternative?
The United
States is the only nation whose citizens have the freedom and institutions to
control its military and which has the power to remove dangerous foreign
dictators without causing the deaths of their innocent victims and the
destruction of their means of existence.
Americans
have an obligation to humanity to demonstrate our compassion, strength and
imagination, and we have a duty to our children to avoid wasting their lives
and futures in senseless wars when we can better accomplish our political aims
by other means.
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