Email to a Friend - "I'm Against It."

Today's email to a friend who is not on Facebook: "_____ , thanks for your response, and as we both realize, 'this is complicated.' Yet, by your 'reasoning:' Should the United States modify its interventionist policy in Central Africa, and resume supplying Rwandan invaders fighting a vicious insurgency in Eastern Congo? Or should it send weapons to the Congolese instead, as it did when it bolstered the vicious Mobutu Sese Seko regime for decades? The brutal, ongoing Congolese conflict has killed far more poeple than have died in Syria over the last two years. What makes the Congo a less worthy 'beneficiary' of US military 'largesse' than Syria? Should the US have been involved in overthrowing Manuel Zelaya, as the former Honduran president maintains it was? And just look at Honduras now! Should American military and intelligence units have conspired against Hugo Chavez, attempting to remove him in a 2002 military putsch? They did, of course. Many Venezuelans resent us for just that. What about Darfur in the year 2005? Was the CIA, utilizing our tax dollars, obliged to have supported, in a big way, the Christian minority then fighting the Muslim Sudanese government? For that matter, should we have gotten involved on a major scale in Sri Lanka's civil war, from 1983-2010? Where does 'legitimate' US-sponsored interventionism begin, and where does it END in your mind's eye? Does your interventionism have any basis in rational thinking, or are you guided by purely emotional factors? But why have you set your sights so keenly and particularly on Syria? Why have you made it the Number One focus of the militarism and interventionism you currently espouse? What about the law of unintended consequences? The CIA armed the Afghan Mujahadeen beginning in 1980 - in retrospect, I don't see that as having had a positive outcome, over a 32-year span. Think: 'BLOWBACK.' More recently, I don't think Libya is noticeably better off than it was under Qaddaffi - yes, Qaddaffi is gone, but Libya was significantly damaged and destabilized by the bombing, and now suffers a seemingly intractable refugee problem, among other grave consequences. I can't imagine you actually believe that deposing any and every dictator 'unfavorable to America' - often people we SUPPORTED previously - is our god-given, 'Manifest Destiny,' our national mission for Americans living in the 21st Century. First Manuel Noriega was "OUR Guy;" then he wasn't, and thousands of ordinary Panamanians paid with their lives. The last hundred years should have taught us, as a people, that we're better off staying out of many, if not the vast majority of these conflicts, or at least seeking an international humanitarian response instead. Why are you clamoring to arm Syrian rebels in 2012, when I don't imagine you supported the Contras' 1980's counterinsurgency in Nicaragua? (It was obviously right to oppose the Contras.) Just becasue Assad is a "VERY bad guy" doesn't mean I'm prepared to advocate US intervention in Syria now. That's what Obama and Hillary are considering, BTW, full-scale intervention, at least from the air. Moreover, merely arming the Syrian rebels is also a form of intervention. It IS taking sides, with god only knows what eventual outcome. As for Israel, all I will say about that country is I favor halting the $4 billion in annual military aid to that outlaw regime, especially in light of their recent actions in Gaza and their stated intention to build yet more illegal settlements. As for the Syrian people potentially holding feelings of resentment and ill-will toward Americans in the future if we don't arm the rebels - consider that millions of Iraqis and Afghans now hold precisely such sentiments - just because the US DID intervene. So, _____, feel free to call me a hopeless isolationist - I'd much rather be that than an American Imperialist. -DG P.S.: The United States currently has a national debt in excess of $16 trillion."