No more war! There is no such thing as a military “action…limited in duration and scope” (News and Updates, http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/foreign-policy/syria). This is a complete fabrication of war profiteers and their constituents. Once a nation goes to war, the unpredictability of that conflict always leads to escalation and further encampment. The fog of war is constantly filled with vengeful assertions of inflamed national pride in scornful battles, while a precarious balance of ferocity versus humanity almost always crashes to the former. The latter and its accompanying protection of human rights and dignity are much better supported by diplomacy, fact-finding and deal-brokering. Let the United Nations finish its job. Stop the grind of the wheels of America’s military industrial complex.

Ultimately, this is not about who occupies this office at any given time; it’s about who we are as a country. I believe that the people’s representatives must be invested in what America does abroad, and now is the time to show the world that America keeps our commitments. We do what we say. And we lead with the belief that right makes might -- not the other way around (Statement by the President on Syria, 8/31/13, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/08/31/statement-president-syria )

Killing innocent civilians, the `collateral damage` of war in the CIA’s terms, doesn’t beget peace. These are the human beings who pay with their lives, even when the strikes are supposedly strategic or limited. Bombs cannot be that precise. Only human hearts can. So many unsuspecting children, women and men died already because of the ruthlessness of the culprits who exacted irreversible damage with their chemical weaponry. If President Assad’s regime did in fact use chemical weapons against the resistance forces, it doesn’t justify the United States diving into this civil war which easily could become a regional conflict. There are too many conflicting forces, each with their own interests: Assad and Al-Qaeda linked groups, the Free Syrian Army, Iran, Hezbollah, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the US. The same is still true even if it were the other way around and the Free Syrian Army was at fault for using and/or mishandling chemical weapons.

If we, as an aspiring beacon of light, are to “show the world that America keeps our commitments,” then we should proactively lead the diplomatic effort. Diplomacy holds much more weight for far longer of a duration. The Geneva Protocol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Protocol) mandates: “The High Contracting Parties will exert every effort to induce other States to accede to the present Protocol.” This is one of our major commitments in the international arena that we hold as a high contracting party. Thus, we are bound first and foremost, at least as of 1925, to preventing use of chemical weapons by any peaceful means necessary.

We hold lots of political leverage with all the neighboring countries involved as well as with Russia. The G20 summit in St. Petersburg provides the perfect opportunity to broker peace, albeit behind-the-scenes work. Upholding the U.N. resolutions against the use of chemical weapons or weapons of mass destruction means we lead by example, pull all diplomatic channels in a roe and exhibit true leadership.

The consensus remains that this situation is not about `might makes right` versus `right makes might` as President Obama tried to sophomorically define in Arthurian terms. This is an argument about following the same visceral war-mongering response versus giving peace a real chance. I live in Japan, the only country in the world to suffer twice at the hands of the United States’ decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even sixty plus years forward, victims of the bombings use their entire life energy to teach the world about the tragic destructive power that one set of human beings sadistically imposed on another set of human beings. You can read more about these events at the Hiroshima Atomic Bombing memorial site (http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/top_e.html) and more about Olive Stone’s recent documentary about the subject (http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20130814p2a00m0na010000c.html). Mr. Stone said of achieving peace:

Our goal is to inspire a movement in the United States, Japan, China, Russia, Latin America, and all over the world for people to understand their real history rather than the history of empire, which is always a lie. We don't learn the lessons, we repeat the mistakes -- and the planet is not going to survive if this is the way we deal with problems.