One of my most trusted correspondents, who is a U.S. foreign policy analyst and writer with expertise in the Islamic world, and an Orthodox Christian, shared this with me. Let us heed his advice and register with our elected representatives in Washington our opposition to U.S. support for the Al Qaeda-linked jihadists in Syria, and direct US military involvement against the Syrian government.
Feel free to turn this into a post for the "Facing Islam" blog. I wrote this for my Facebook page, and I don't have time to turn this into a more formal article.
It is our responsibility as American citizens to contact our political representatives immediately.
Peace...
When I called my congressman and senators, this is what I said. I expressed my strong opposition to a bombing campaign against Syria. I asked what the representative's position was. (All three offices said that their representative hadn't released a public statement yet.) I said that I wanted answers to three questions.
1) Where is the proof that the Syrian government ordered a chemical-weapons attack? I remember Colin Powell's 2003 presentation to the U.N. regarding Iraqi WMD. Most of the claims have since been revealed to be incorrect. Are we really going to make the same mistakes again? http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0811-09.htm
2) What will we do if the Syrian government retaliates? If, God forbid, American sailors are killed, are we planning to escalate the conflict? If Syria bombs Saudi Arabia or Jordan or Turkey [or Israel], will we get further involved?
3) If jihadist groups like the Al-Nusra Front take over Syria, what will we do then? Will American ground troops be sent in to secure Syria's chemical weapons? If we don't want that, why are we planning to bomb the Syrian soldiers who are preventing the jihadists from gaining control of the chemical weapons?
I cannot believe that after 4400 American soldiers were killed in Iraq, we are about to repeat the same disastrous mistakes regarding Syria. I urge every American citizen to call his or her representatives immediately.
(I give permission for this post to be copied and re-pasted, in whole.)