Some heavy thoughts on Syria and our judicial system

By Jeff Orvis

Time to weigh in on a couple of heavy subjects. Thoughts of Syria in the past few days have for some reason led me to think about our own judicial system.

As I write this on Monday afternoon, we are just over 24 hours away from a major address to the nation by President Obama. According to reports from the White House, he supposedly will be explaining why our country should take punitive action against the Syrian government in the wake of reports that its leader ordered the deaths of hundreds or thousands of men, women and children through chemical agents.

For those of you who know me, this next statement may seem out of character. But as much as I admire and support our president, I'm just not sure he is taking the right path on this one. Since news of this atrocity first surfaced, our military has sent a lot of resources to the region. They used to call it “saber rattling.” I don't know what the proper term would be when the “sabers” are surface to air missiles.

From a purely fiscal standpoint, this doesn't seem to make sense. We are still spending hundreds of thousands of dollars each week trying to untangle the mess we were handed by the misinformed last administration in Iraq. More resources are devoted to our war in Afghanistan. Surely just to float several ships in seas near Syria we are spending thousands of dollars a day in personnel costs, fuel, etc.

From a tactical standpoint, the president will have to do quite a selling job on the American people to convince us that even if we bombarded parts of Syria it would stop the killing by the Syrian government. It would be wonderful if we knew where the chemical weapon stockpiles were in that country and were able to neutralize them with some of those missiles. But it appears that any hit on those stockpiles would probably spread the poison, not destroy it.

There was a time when I suspect we alleviated the problem of ruthless dictators through covert assassination, either by American personnel or by agencies of some of our allies. Our leaders would report, “problem solved” and if someone asked, “how did you do that?” you would hear the equivalent of “you don't want to know,” or “it's classified.” Besides, it has been reported that the Syrian leader has a brother who is even more evil than his brother. So you would probably have to carry out more than one assassination to eliminate the problem.

It seems like we've had problems that originated in the Middle East, even long before Sept. 11, 2001. Quite naturally, when we hear of unrest in that area, the first thought might be if we had the means, we should just level the whole area, turn it into the world's largest parking lot and start over. And that leads us to the moral question.

While it might be easy to blame an entire race of people for terrorist activities around the world, all you have to do is look into the faces of some of the children of Syria, innocent, fun-loving and wide-eyed...until they are felled by poison from their government. For that reason, the president is correct when he says we can't just stand by and watch this continue. But if we can't cut off the head of the perpetrator and if we can't neutralize the poison, we should at least devote considerable resources on the short term to relief for the millions of refugees who are fleeing the country.

Some of our armed forces could facilitate the orderly and safe evacuation of those who are attempting to get away from the tyrant. Some of our warships could be used to block any further shipments of weapons to Syria. But I don't see any way any punitive missile strikes will be the answer.

Some people who oppose the president on this matter say we can no longer be the policeman of the world. That led to thoughts of recent developments in a well-known criminal case.

Ariel Castro, convicted of kidnapping, rape and many other charges involving three girls in Cleveland had begun serving a life sentence. But just weeks after the sentencing hearing Castro committed suicide. With this final act, he either did a favor for his victims, who will no longer have to live with the knowledge that he is no longer on this earth. Or some may view it as the ultimate final insult as he cheated those who demanded justice and wanted to see him put away for the rest of his life.

At least the tax payers of Ohio won't have to pay the $30,000 or more each year to house this beast.

I am not in favor of the death penalty. Since science has progressed to the point where DNA testing can either confirm the guilt or innocence of an accused person, I wonder how many people who professed that they didn't commit a crime all the way to the chair, chamber or needle were killed by mistake.

I will admit that before more Christian thoughts can wipe away my initial reaction, when I hear about a case of a child molester, I think he should be sentenced to prison and placed in a cell with some big guy who has a small son or daughter on the outside. Those thoughts stem from reports of inhumane conditions in some of our prisons in this country.

Put hundreds of men or women together in cramped quarters with little or no promise of release and it's a recipe for violence. It has been for thousands of years. But that's a whole other story for another time.

My hope is that President Obama can offer some clarity to a definitely complicated issue in Syria and my prayer is there is some way the killing of innocent citizens in that country can come to a quick end.