Syria and What is Good

I thought John Kerry did a beautiful job, a presidential job, trying to convince the American people and the world that we ought to go to war against Syria.  Really brilliant, save one problem, that we would be siding with Al Qaeda in the conflict.  Or rather, not siding with them as much as aiding and abetting them.  I don’t know about you, but I find this confusing.  Al Qaeda is the good guy now?  They were the international bad guy just weeks ago.  Weren’t they?

Conservatives and conservative commentators seem to be focused on the hypocrisy of this Democratic administration, comparing the situation to Bush’s attacking Iraq on moral grounds.  This is not false, but a digression.  Why do we wish to be huffing and puffing about that hypocrisy when the other one, the hypocrisy of saying that Al Qaeda is our enemy, a terrorist organization, while we will support their “freedom fighters” in Syria or Egypt.  We will claim this as right in the name of democracy, while knowing that such a revolutionary democracy may not be legitimate and observing that it has not proven itself democracy in aid of liberty.  Truly, Muslim nations like Iran or even Pakistan, lately, have brought a new spin to the idea of “tyranny of the majority”.

Al Jazeera supports Kerry .  Are we surprised?  Here’s another thing, I am seeing ads for Al Jazeera all over the place and even as sponsors for programs on NPR.  I know they can afford to attempt to become mainstream media in America, but does that mean we have to accept them?  Are we switching sides in the War on Terror?  Oh, wait, the administration does not use the term anymore, do they.  The press isn’t supposed to use it either.  But didn’t they used to acknowledge the problem in other words?  Perhaps this is circumstantial.  The enemy of our enemy is our friend.  What about if the enemy of our enemy is our enemy?  Then is he also our friend? With friends like that . . . . Maybe  Bashar al-Assad is not exactly our friend , but is it the a case that now our administration needs him to be our enemy?  Kerry says the evidence is clear, but it is not so clear. 

I think about the wounded warriors in Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, ones without legs or hands from IEDs.  Actually, most of them are out in civilian life, trying to function in society after their sacrifices of the self in the Mid East in wartime  If we will make common cause with the enemy that put them in that state, I say we owe them their limbs back.