Let's Not Bomb Syrian Streets

 Abo Shuja/Agence France-Presse and Getty Images.

What would a U.S. missile strike in Syria mean to the civilian population?   Here's a poignant image from the Wall Street Journal, of a man walking to work on a street that looks like the bombed out city of Dresden during World War II.  It is a town in the province of Deir-al-Zour, an oil-rich province bordering Iraq.

Would the life of this gentleman and his family be better in the aftermath of a strike?  Would this make him feel more positively about America and about our values?  Casualties are mounting, and the flow of displaced persons and refugees is increasing all over Syria.  We would add to both of these rivers of people.

The more the Obama administration's various mouthpieces spin a case of military action, the more heart-rending it becomes to see pictures of what Syrian society is suffering now, while awaiting a strike from the West whose justification is to hold an intransigent dictator, who is without conscience, "accountable."

As we've written before, we've never been cared a whit about the proliferation of chemical weapons, like nerve gas, throughout the Middle East---until now.  Here's what the Wall Street Journal notes today,

"Syria’s top leaders amassed one of the world’s largest stockpiles of chemical weapons with help from the Soviet Union and Iran, as well as Western European suppliers and even a handful of American companies, according to American diplomatic cables and declassified intelligence records."

 Do you think Presidents Hollande of France and Obama of the United States are going to hold those companies accountable for violating non-proliferation treaties?  How about holding ourselves and our allies accountable for being blind, callous and inattentive to the obvious market signals about commercial traffic in chemical weapons?  Let's help the Syrian people by trying to work out a solution which brings them some respite from proxy wars by bringing them help with food, sanitation, and medical personnel.  Bomb fragments which say "Made in the USA" are the last thing they need to see on their streets.