I'm a charitable kind of guy. I like to help people when I can. But I'm sure you've noticed as well as I have what the world is like nowadays. You help someone and they end up suing you? Or perhaps you help someone stranded on the side of the road and they are upset because you don't have a pair of jumper cables and they don't want to wait while you drive them somewhere and suddenly what was "lending a helping hand" turns into a far more complicated situation that you really don't want to be in at all. Whew - that was a mouthful. But you get the picture. Help? It just ain't what it used to be.
On the world's stage, where the US is the primary player in Act III of the "World at War", we find our hero set upon by financial problems, political infighting, global economies collapsing and the tyranny of those with power against those without. As with our history of helping those in need (and those that didn't need help but still "needed it" anyways), we've spent the last 100+ years jumping at the chance to spill blood and spray lead in the name of freedom. Sometimes it was necessary, other times it wasn't. And now we have Syria, who is in the middle of a civil war, clamoring for assisting. As in the past, the subject of chemical weapons (weapons of mass destruction) has come into the mix and suddenly, our President is rattling his saber, calling for intervention. So what next?
I'll tell you what we do. Provide whatever support we can but no military support. Why? Today's freedom fighters are tomorrow's enemies. I can't think of any military conflict that the US was involved in the middle east that while somewhat good natured didn't turn into hate, venom and vitriol later. Americans in general do not understand the people of the middle east. To us, everyone must be western and therefore must act the same way. It is this ignorance that has cost the lives of thousands of people in the past 10 years alone.
Regardless of the above, let the UN and other European countries take the lead on this one. We can't even afford to take care of the people in our country, let alone another. We give money in taxes, our sons and daughters lives for those across the world and yet we do very little for our own. Feed the neighborhood kids but ignore your own children's crying out in hunger? Not in my house - it shouldn't be that way in our country either.
Agree or disagree, surely we can all see that there is a need to change. We spend too much, do too little and even the glimmer of hope that life may be better washes away like castles made of sand at the first gentle tide. Something different must be done. I'll leave you with something a patent clerk once said that is, most likely, the most life changing quote I've ever heard (paraphrased):
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results." - Albert Einstein*
*commonly attributed to him
On the world's stage, where the US is the primary player in Act III of the "World at War", we find our hero set upon by financial problems, political infighting, global economies collapsing and the tyranny of those with power against those without. As with our history of helping those in need (and those that didn't need help but still "needed it" anyways), we've spent the last 100+ years jumping at the chance to spill blood and spray lead in the name of freedom. Sometimes it was necessary, other times it wasn't. And now we have Syria, who is in the middle of a civil war, clamoring for assisting. As in the past, the subject of chemical weapons (weapons of mass destruction) has come into the mix and suddenly, our President is rattling his saber, calling for intervention. So what next?
I'll tell you what we do. Provide whatever support we can but no military support. Why? Today's freedom fighters are tomorrow's enemies. I can't think of any military conflict that the US was involved in the middle east that while somewhat good natured didn't turn into hate, venom and vitriol later. Americans in general do not understand the people of the middle east. To us, everyone must be western and therefore must act the same way. It is this ignorance that has cost the lives of thousands of people in the past 10 years alone.
Regardless of the above, let the UN and other European countries take the lead on this one. We can't even afford to take care of the people in our country, let alone another. We give money in taxes, our sons and daughters lives for those across the world and yet we do very little for our own. Feed the neighborhood kids but ignore your own children's crying out in hunger? Not in my house - it shouldn't be that way in our country either.
Agree or disagree, surely we can all see that there is a need to change. We spend too much, do too little and even the glimmer of hope that life may be better washes away like castles made of sand at the first gentle tide. Something different must be done. I'll leave you with something a patent clerk once said that is, most likely, the most life changing quote I've ever heard (paraphrased):
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results." - Albert Einstein*
*commonly attributed to him
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