Awaken My Heart To Life: Travels: Syria: Musings of an American in London

We interrupt our regular schedule of one post a day to bring you a timely perspective of the Syrian crisis from an American in London.

This was in my newspaper yesterday evening.

Side note: this wasn't even the front page. There were at least 6 different articles covering different aspects of the vote and from different perspectives. In a newspaper that is put out twice a day, and given away for free. If the US were in charge of this paper we would've moved on to six articles about Lady Gaga being in London (as opposed to the one-inch blurb they actually put in the paper.) Just found that interesting.

I want to post a few insights on this article specifically, and the whole situation in general, but first a disclaimer. I'm still forming my opinion on this whole awful situation. Obviously I don't think it's right to watch other people suffer, but I don't know what the best reaction is at this point. (Ideally we wouldn't be such a violent, ego-centric species and it never would have come to this. Point all the fingers you want at religion or oil, but it all eventually boils down to humans are pretty awful at doing the right thing.)

The insights are thus:

1. This situation is more deeply felt on the eastern side of the pond. First of all, despite the fact that WWII ended almost 70 years ago and so only the eldest of the American population have any recollection of it, here in Europe they haven't forgotten. Here there are countries still trying to recover from the Russian occupation that resulted (basically all of Eastern Europe). Here Germany is still trying to rebuild its reputation and find a way to pay reparations (they only paid off the reparations for the first world war in the last few years.)
The average American felt the effects of WWII because they had to ration sugar and tin.
The average Londoner hid in a bomb shelter every night for 76 days straight.
Here the buildings still have bullet holes, and that's the buildings that are still standing. A walk through the east end of London is interesting in part because every few meters the construction abruptly changes from Victorian Age to 1960s design, then abruptly back again because so many sections were simply demolished by the Luftwaffe.

You can use Google Maps to plant yourself in the middle of East End (try the crossing of Widegate and Middlesex to see the example in the screenshot I took below. I wish I had taken pictures of the street we were on for my tour, but at the time I was just trying to absorb the history and now I can't find the exact street, so this will have to do. It's better if you use Google Maps so you can spin around and look up, as that helps to tell that the building on the left is obviously Victorian and the one on the right is obviously mid 20th century. This isn't because in the 1960s they demolished a bunch of random building and built new ones, but because the Luftwaffe bombed so many random buildings, leaving the ones on either side relatively untouched.

2. It is so much easier to view the Middle East conflicts in a detached way when you're sitting in the middle of Ohio, which to my knowledge has never experienced any sort of terrorist attack since the Europeans wiped out the Native Americans (with biological warfare, oddly enough given today's topic of chemical warfare.) In fact, it is so easy to be detached that if I were home right now I would invariably be completely ignoring the entire thing (I tend to try and avoid anything political, regardless of its importance, so that no one has to listen to me talk about it like I am now.)
But here in London it is a little harder to ignore. It was barely eight years ago that the public transport system here was the target of suicide bombers. The two Underground train lines bombed were the Circle Line and the Piccadilly Line, both of which I have used often while here on this trip. Only a couple of months ago, a man here was murdered by Islamic extremists in the middle of the day, in the middle of the street.
I'm not saying the risk of terror attacks in London is comparable to the danger on the streets of the Middle East, but it certainly more likely than it is in the United States.

1-2 conclusion: Given the fact that England is not as protected as the United States, thanks largely to the Atlantic Ocean, it's easy to see why their government is not as gung-ho to get involved in Syria.

3. There is a lot of talk concerning how this vote against supporting the United States in a strike against Syria is going to damage Britain's "special relationship" with us. I personally don't think there's any reason the Brits should have to ask "how high?" every time the US tell them to jump. They are a sovereign country for crying out loud. If they feel they should get involved, then they can make that decision on their own. They don't need the US to bully them into it. The general consensus in London right now is that if the UK hadn't blindly followed the US into Iraq (largely because of this "special relationship" and not because they actually wanted to go to war in their own right), they probably would be on board with the Syria strike. We'll never know, of course, because they did simply follow the US in 2003, despite their reservations.

"There is no reason why mass sectarian
killings by a state are less worse when
ordinary munitions are used."

4. Finally, I do understand the reason chemical weapons were banned at Geneva. (For those that don't: very basically put, chemical weapons kill more civilians because they can't be focused in an attack and are thus deemed "unfair.") However, torture and murder are torture and murder. You can't suddenly become concerned for human kind just because a certain kind of death is now happening. You can't say that intervening in Syria now is for humanitarian reasons, when you've been ignoring the death and destruction this long. When you're ignoring the death and destruction all over the world. This is where I agree with the Brits when they specifically voted against joining the US under the pretense that it would be humanitarian intervention (which is basically what they were voting on).
Now, upholding the laws of the Geneva Convention is another thing, but technically that is the responsibility of the UN. Which is a whole other ball of worms (I know it's a mixed metaphor, but isn't it so much better than the two metaphors individually?)

Ultimately this is why I don't know what to do about Syria.
I have no earthly idea how to stop people from killing each other. People have been trying to end that sort of thing for millennia and clearly nothing has worked.
I don't think the US has the moral high ground on which to stand police the world, but I also don't think that's a good excuse to ignore the horrible things happening everywhere. One more wrong won't finally make a right.
As human beings from all over the planet, I strongly believe we shouldn't just sit back and watch the world burn. What to do about it? I don't have a blasted clue.