I am sitting here off from work today because I have Bronchitis. I had to go to the Doctor yesterday to get antibiotics. I have been contemplating the horrid massacre in Paris of innocent folks out enjoying a Friday evening in one of the world's great cities.
There are so many questions to ask. The problem is there are no good answers. I grieve for all those who lost their lives and their families and loved ones. I pray for the wounded that they may heal and become whole again. The French people are our brothers and sisters. No one deserves to die in the way these people were butchered on Friday. And on the other hand, no one deserves to die like the innocent folks in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan have died over the last years.
The usual suspects come out of the woodwork crying for more war, troops on the ground. That worked really well when the US and Great Britain invaded Iraq. Why would anyone listen to these idiots? They have been consistently wrong on everything since the 9/11 attacks. Why does anyone pay attention now?
How do you defeat an ideology? How do you stop terrorist organizations from recruiting young men willing to kill anyone and blow themselves up? How do you stop the hatred of the western world? Bombing and killing indiscriminately will certainly not help any cause. Poverty, desperation and no hope for a future will not help deter young men from joining a cause. The more innocents that die in the middle east from our bombs is a recruiting poster for the jihadists.
I certainly don't have all the answers. I do know bombing, drone strikes, boots on the ground and more war is not going to stop an ideology and cause. This is not World War II or any kind of conventional war we have ever seen. There must be a way we can work through this without mass killings of innocents and total destruction of peoples lives. It is many ways our fault for intruding on the middle east with the horrific, unnecessary invasion of Iraq. The worst foreign policy blunder in the history of The USA. Many of the people there don't trust us. Can you blame them? How do you put the genie back in the bottle? You can't, and there is the conundrum we find ourselves in.
God bless those murdered in France and God bless those murdered in the middle east. I think of the words Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. The proud and profound motto of France. A true noble set of words to base a country, a people, a civilization on. We need to apply it here and everywhere. If we don't, the future looks quite bleak for a long time, maybe forever.
