The Problem Is The United States
By Timothy V. Gatto
14 July, 2012
Countercurrents.org
I'd like to start this by asking a very simple and straight forward question. “Is regime change in Syria so important that you would let your family, neighbors and yourself die for it?” That's the question. I told you it was simple. Simple that is, if you give a yes or no to the question.
I don't believe that you would get a yes or no from anyone in the government. They don't work that way. Here's another question for them:
“Do you honestly believe we could “win” a nuclear war with Russia or China or both?”
They won't answer that one either. Still, they apparently believe that they can. If they didn't believe a nuclear war was “winnable”, they wouldn't bring us this close to one. Am I being honest here? Think about it (yes, here I go again, asking people to think).
I don't believe that Syria is worth sacrificing everything for. In fact, I don't believe Syria is worth sacrificing anything for. I think that a majority of Americans would agree with me. So, why is Syria the focus of American diplomacy (or lack thereof)?
Now that should be the question we should be asking of ourselves and our government. Obama and company should understand something: Most Americans don't care about Assad staying in power or stepping aside. In fact, many Americans couldn't find Syria on a globe. So why should we risk our lives for a country most of us know nothing about?
The simple answer to that question is because our government wants us to. Because they say we should care, we pretend that we do. We don't. We didn't care yesterday, we don't care today, and we certainly won't care tomorrow. That's the truth. If you really care about Syria or the people that live within its borders, you are a very small minority.
How can I say this with such conviction? It's easy. I'm going to give you a list of countries that kill its people on a regular basis:
This list came from the top of my head (or wherever thoughts come from). I'm sure that there are many more countries that kill their own people on a regular basis.
So why is Syria so important? It isn't. It's important to our government and our military, but it isn't important to anyone else (unless you emigrated from there). Its military importance is that it is on the Mediterranean Coast and it borders on Iran. It has a Russian naval port.
It supports Hezbollah and Iran. It has about two million Iraqi refugees (from that other war of ours). It has a secular government. It doesn't kowtow to the U.S. and NATO (except for helping us carry out extraordinary rendition (It's OK to torture people when you do it for America).
In fact, it's OK for America to do anything. We can bomb people, assassinate people and put embargoes on nations (an act of war). We can do anything we please, anywhere and at any time. We are a nation of exceptional people. The only reason that other nations despise us is because they hate us for our freedom (We are doing our very best to solve this problem by eliminating as many freedoms as we possibly can).
The next time you watch the corporate media report on the Syrian governments atrocities, ask yourself some questions. One question to ask is how did these “rebels” get all of the weapons you see in the videos? Why do the “rebels” carry shiny new M-4's and M-16's? How did these weapons get in the hands of the “rebels” so fast? Who speaks for the rebel opposition? Why does the U.S. care so much for the Syrian people now, when last year we despised them?
Why does Russia and China oppose a UN mandate to end the fighting by military force? Maybe because Russia and China abstained on UN Resolution 1973 (the authorization of military force in Libya) and NATO used this mandate to bomb Libya back to the Stone Age. I don't blame them for thinking twice this time.
I know I'm asking you to ask a lot of questions, but there is much at stake here. The future of civilization is something we should take seriously. You can put “Dancing with the Stars” on your DVR. This is more important.
Our government is totally out of control. Nobody “hates us for our freedom”. In fact, no one particularly cares about our freedom or anything else we have or do not have. The truth in 2012 is that America is not among the best-loved nations on Earth. The truth is that most people hate us for getting involved in their internal affairs. They hate us for supplying arms to the world.
We could feed the entire world with eight days of our annual military budget. The Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety. The situation is out of control. The situation will remain out of control until the American people care enough to do something about it. We can either rise up or die. That's not much of a choice. We can only blame ourselves for letting things get this far. We allowed this situation to deteriorate to this point. We allowed it, and we must fix it. That is our biggest challenge. It's not Syria, Iran or any other country. The problem is the United States.
Tim Gatto is former Chairman of the Liberal Party of America, Tim is a retired Army Sergeant. He currently lives in South Carolina. He is the author of "Complicity to Contempt" and "Kimchee Days" available at Oliver Arts and Open Press.
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