Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Punitive attack on Assad

I've just watched the following O'reilly video:

http://video.foxnews.com/v/2660510679001/the-consequences-of-syria/

And i'm floored. He can't seriously equate war with a punitive action on Assad. The idea is nonsense and i'm convinced that O'Reilly knows this. So what on earth is the play here?

Is it really more important to paint a picture that presents Obama as "weak" than it is to propose a credible solution for Syria that fulfills the following criteria?

  1. Action in Syria's best interest
  2. Action in our best interest
  3. Action in the region's best interest
Now, i'm not defending Assad nor his use regimes use of chemical weapons, but surely a scenario which removes them from his arsenal prior to any further military action is a good idea, and it absolutely doesn't need to be the end of the conversation. If we want to remove Assad from power we can still move in that direction and do so with greater authority.

I find this to be a fantastic first step toward a liberated Syria and one that offers the possibility of finding peace through diplomacy. More and more is pointing to a joint diplomatic effort between Russia and the US. Now imagine that. The US threatens with war so that Lavrov can offer to take those nasty chemical weapons off of Assad's hands. Interesting indeed. Yes, the US is now so weak that it chooses to avoid costly wars and exposing it's service men to the threat of chemical weapons.



Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Jimmy the Greek from Lebanon...

Today I had a few minutes of time during my normal lunch period and decided to get a haircut. My hairdresser was a roughly 30 year old bearded individual who asked me quietly in broken swedish if it would be ok for us to speak english. And off we were talking about the world.

"Hi, I'm Jimmy. My father was too big a fan of Jimmy Carter and he named me Jimmy. Personally I am a big fan of George Bush."

Jimmy is from Lebanon but is of half greek heritage and recently left his homeland and has moved to Sweden to escape the terrors of running a hair salon just outside of Beirut. A christian, his native language is French and though he spoke a little arabic he claimed to not speak it as fluently. Now, i'm stunned to meet someone from this part of the world who claims to love George Bush, but I suppose I shouldn't be. I explained to him my own feelings (hate is a strong word, but I am not stretching if I say that I think George Bush was the worst president in my lifetime).

"George Bush makes war, because he says god told him to. He seems to me to be a righteous man" or something to that effect.

ehh WHAT?

I went on to explain that it's precisely this sort of piety that emboldens me to question religion. How can weigh in on your thoughts with  my silly reason when you're having a personal, and hidden conversation with God about what to do. This is precisely why I am not just an atheist, but a new atheist.

And why does he like George Bush? He's a christian of course. Not one of those pesky, arabic speaking muslims who are destroying his homeland. Now he's abandoned it and fled to Sweden where he can be surrounded by people who don't care about religion at all. Now he's safe to be a christian.

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Honestly, I thoroughly enjoyed having my hair cut by Jimmy and i'll be going back in about 6 weeks for my next cut...

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