viewpoint and even temperament as we do, but when it comes to tough decisions, I think we should trust ourselves as citizens participating in our democracy. So I can "trust" John Kerry to be an all and all good guy trying to do his best, but also not trust who he is listening to. The same with the President. I just feel like there is a pro-war mentality in Washington DC that is more powerful than one party or President. Bush has been out of town for over 5 years, yet the attitude that every problem can be solved with bombs remains firmly in place. I do not think Kerry is being exposed enough to people like me who are highly skeptical. I don't think you have to be a super expert in the M.E. to have pretty solid opinions about it. In fact, I have noticed that journalists who heavily embed in these countries tend to favor war more because they are exposed to so much anguish and desperation, they feel we must do something about it. Sometimes, having some distance from the conflict gives one better perspective. I think Obama, Kerry, Powers, and Rice are being advised by "experts" who are either of that pro-interventionist viewpoint or from forces inside Syria that are too close to the action.
I'll give an example. Read this article: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/08/29/youtube_syria
The images flooded in only hours after the Aug. 21 chemical attack in Damascus's eastern suburbs. And they soon reached the very highest rungs of the U.S. government: "As a father, I can't get the image out of my head of a man who held up his dead child, wailing while chaos swirled around him," said Secretary of State John Kerry in his impassioned Aug. 26 speech. "[T]he images of entire families dead in their beds without a drop of blood or even a visible wound; bodies contorting in spasms; human suffering that we can never ignore or forget."
...
The local activists who filmed these videos, then, have accomplished what years of hectoring from the official Syrian opposition have been unable to do -- bring the world to the brink of military intervention against Bashar al-Assad's regime. ...
The amateur Syrian videographers' accomplishment, however, came at a high cost. ...
"The chemical attacks, on the first day of the massacre, claimed the lives of many media activists in Zamalka coordination because they inhaled the chemical toxic gases," Murad Abu Bilal, the sole survivor, told Zaitouneh in an interview uploaded to -- what else -- YouTube. "[T]hey went out to shoot and collect information about the chemical attack, but none of them came back."
A really horrifying story about how the witnesses died documenting the chemical weapon attack. We can really identify with these people, rushing in so that they can upload videos to YouTube to show what happened, and then they became victims themselves! This makes you want to do something, doesn't it? But I feel like such a story, which is great journalism, should not be used to determine whether America goes to war, which a bombing attack is. So I'm saying I trust my own feelings before Kerry's, and my opinion is that we should not go in there alone bombing away without any strategy or plan of what is to happen in Syria, possibly making things worse and hurting the people we say we want to help. Sometimes we the people are wiser than our leaders. The Republicans may be hypocrites but I hope they come through and vote no, along with a decent caucus of anti-war Democrats.
= new reply since forum marked as read