Speakin’ Out:  Standing on shaky ground

As Russian and Chinese naval forces are being built up in the Mediterranean Sea, a plan by the Obama administration to carry out a military strike against the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria is in the works.

This supposed need to have an air strike against the Assad regime originates from the off-prompter words of the President about it on August 20, 2012: "...a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized." Here, the implied response to Assad crossing this "red line" is the use of military force against him. But the talking point of the Administration became an assertion that America or the world drew the "red line." Regardless of any treaties passed by the U.S. Senate or the nations of the world, none of them specified that the US would need to have an immediate military response wherever in the world chemical warfare was waged. Any urgency to respond to the use of chemical weapons in Syria comes from President's own challenge to Assad over a year ago.

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So while the Administration tries to present their potential military response as something the world or Americans have agreed upon, in reality there is no international coalition that is supporting them and there has been an overwhelming opposition by the American people to this action. In the U.S., there are two main groups of people opposing what the President wants to do in Syria. One group is against the use of military force in most, if not every, international conflict. The other group is those who are not necessarily opposed to military action against a belligerent country, but believe the strategy for this is flawed and the timing is wrong. So the president is stuck trying to win over the anti-war element in his base as well as convince the "hawks" in both political parties that he is a capable commander-in-chief heading up a military action that is necessary and will produce the intended results without creating a greater conflict. Whatever one's reason for opposing the military strike, it includes questioning the wisdom of putting American lives at risk. Not only that, some of the coalition of forces against Assad are clearly opposed to US interests in the region and Al-Qaeda rebels in Syria have used the chaos in the civil war to carry out an agenda of attacking Christian homes and churches. We see that even many of those who support some kind of opposition to the Assad regime have set themselves against the military strike. For example, Lt. General Jerry Boykin (Ret.), speaking on the Fox News Channel said: "If we had started two years ago we could have built a coalition among the Free Syrian Army as well as well as the Christians and the Kurds, that I think would have been pro-Western." Even if we had the right and the military strength to enforce good behavior on the Islamic nations in the world, which we don't, our current Administration seems to keep choosing the wrong side, with the end result making things worse and creating an intensification of anti-American sentiment by the people of their respective countries. The flawed Obama administration strategy of trying to spread democracy is the culprit here. Not only did it create the instability in Libya that helped lead to the killing of our ambassador and three other Americans at the consulate in Benghazi, it also put the now-deposed Mohamed Morsi and the Islamic Brotherhood in power in Egypt, a nation currently beset by violence as their military fights against armed members of the Islamic Brotherhood and imprisons their leaders. I am appealing to all Americans who are against this military action, for whatever reason, to continue to make your opposition to it known to your Senators and Representatives in Washington, D.C. as they decide in the next couple of weeks whether or not to give their vote of support to the President.