Gas attack or missile attack: who suffers?

I sent the following webmail to Pres. Obama:

To paraphrase your words: “At what point do we say we need to confront actions that are violating our Constitution?”  “I would argue that when I see 400 children subjected to missiles, over 1,400 innocent civilians dying senselessly … the moral thing to do is not to stand by and do nothing.”


What guarantee do you have that each cruise missile will hit a military target?  What guarantee do you have that each military target will be occupied by those responsible for the gas attack?  Do you know how many civilian workers might be in each target?


A Tomahawk missile has a supposed accuracy of 10 meters.  Many streets in Damascus are less than 10 meters wide.  Will every military target be more than 10 meters from an apartment building?  How far will the debris from a missile explosion go?  How many missile explosions will bring neighboring apartments down?


Assume one apartment building has six floors, each floor has four apartments, each apartment has five residents.  That's 120 residents in a single apartment building.  Do you have any count of how many apartment buildings will be brought down by any misses or near misses or "non-misses"?


If the lethal blast range is 28 meters, then eight neighboring buildings could be brought down. That could mean over 900 residents could be killed by one Tomahawk missile.


If you send ten Tomahawks that could mean over 5,000 Syrians will die for your "message" to Assad.  That is a rather high-price for a message for the deaths of 300 or 1400 people.


Oh, by the way, have you considered the repercussions if any missile damages a mosque?


And if the gas attack was perpetrated by Islamic radicals, you really will have been suckered!

Syria: Popular opinion vs. political opinion

The comments on New York Times articles about Obama's proposal tend to be against any military action with some support for military action.  Apparently popular opinion throughout the country is against any military action.  Apparently the political leadership in Congress seems to be for military action.

Fortunately, some congresspeople are not following the political crowd.  See "Following Classified Briefings, Nolan Will 'Vote and Work Against' U.S. Attack on Syria", Rep. Rick Nolan, 2013-09-03
http://nolan.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/following-classified-briefings-nolan-will-vote-and-work-against-us

I added my own little comment to "House Leaders Express Their Support for Syria Strike", Mark Landler, Michael R. Gordon, and Thom Shanker, New York Times, 2013-09-03:

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
"[O]nly the dead have seen the end of war."
– George Santayana

No matter what your opinion, be sure to send email to the President, your Representative, and both of your Senators.  They might not read your email, but rest assured their staffs are putting them in pro and con "piles".

Oh, yeah!  Remember that little incident in Sarajevo?  How many millions died because of all the miscalculations?

Syria: world of laws or a world of men?

Letter to WhiteHouse.gov

John Adams put into the Massachusetts' Constitution of 1780 "a government of laws and not of men".

In 1945 the United States was a promoter and signatory of the United Nations Charter, which includes "to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace".  That is, a world of laws and not of men.

Too many times during my lifetime, almost every U.S. President from Harry Truman to George W. Bush have taken unilateral action against another government who they claimed was a threat to the peace.  Now a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize has been beating the war drums to take unilateral military action against another member of the United Nations.

What happened to "Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."

End of letter

Be sure to send your own view on Syria to the President, your senators, and your representative.  If you are a citizen of another country, be sure to send your own view to the members of your government.

Syria – A letter to the President of the United States

I posted the following on "Contact Us" at http://www.whitehouse.gov.

Before you were born, the Department of War became the Department of Defense.  Unfortunately, several times since the Department of Defense has become the Department of Offense with disastrous results for troops, our citizens, the economy, and other countries' views towards us.

If we are truly to have a Department of Defense, what is the threat that dictators like Assad pose towards the U.S.?  Is he going to invade us?  If we invade Syria you can rest assured that action will breed terrorists who will invade us.

If Assad is a threat to the region, don't Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait have enough U.S. equipment to take on Assad?

If the U.S. sticks its nose into Syria, it will only give these countries cover to not take action themselves, leaving us as the fall guy when things go badly.