Mr. President, Please Leave Syria Alone

I posted the following on FB yesterday

‘While we are playing Bejeweled, Angry Birds and anxiously awaiting the next episode of Scandal our country is planning to disobey the 6th Commandment and bomb Syria. Is there anyway we can collectively convince our President and his war-mongering advisers that we have no business in Syria and ask them to remember..."Thou Shall Not Kill"? 
Can we demand that we war no more? I mean when will our elected officials actually do the will of the people? What do we have to do?’

The following question was asked:

“I don’t understand the moral calculus that says its OK to stand by and watch a despot kill hundreds of people at a clip. What do you suggest Ty, as alternatives to ending the genocide in Syria.”

What do I suggest we do?

I suggest we mind our own business, that’s what I suggest. Who appointed America the world’s police in the first place? I suggest we remember Iraq and how nobody ever found a chemical play-set, much less chemical weapons. I suggest that we remember that every time we stick our noses in someone else’s affairs, millions of people die and billions of dollars just go up in smoke. They are still bombing in Iraq as the result of our so-called peace-keeping. Let’s see how much good we’ve actually done attempting to be the world’s protectors. Almost 60 thousand of our own died in Vietnam and we were complicit in 3.8 million of Vietnamese being murdered.

Let’s look at how helpful we have been in Iraq. Four thousand five hundred American soldiers killed; more than thirty thousand severely wounded and more than two-2 trillion dollars wasted. Over 650 thousand Iraqis killed and more than a million wounded because we want play police. Remember they said the same thing about Saddam Hussein as they are saying about Assad.  Thousands killed to date in Afghanistan, with the death toll climbing and thousands of the Afghan people dead because we have to HELP. Please; how are we helping with so many dying?  Please keep in mind and mark these words; Assad proclaims his innocence and that he did not do this to his own people, the same way Saddam proclaimed there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction.

What do I suggest? I suggest we turn our attention to the chemical warfare raging right here in our back yards. If we are talking about attacking injustice and fighting for human dignity then attack the murderers who are dropping the bomb of heroin on the inner-city streets of every major metropolis where there are large concentrations of our people. I suggest you demand our officials to spend the billions of dollars they propose to defend Syria on cleaning up our streets. Defend American citizens, the Syrians can take care of themselves. And history has shown they will be much better off without our “so-called assistance” And please don’t tell me that cleaning up our streets is something we have to do ourselves and pass the buck. You damn right we have to do it ourselves, by demanding that those we elect do our bidding.

What do I suggest? I suggest we launch investigations on how it is that chemicals only invade the neighborhoods where there are large concentrations of black and brown people. I suggest we leave Syrian people’s business to Syrian people and we attend to our own. I suggest we demand that someone explain how there are thousands of shootings in our hoods and no one has attacked that problem. I suggest that if you want to attack something, attack the out of control murder rates in every major city were we reside. I suggest we attack the chemical war-mongers who keep shipping crack, heroin, meth and opiate-laced marijuana onto our streets and that they use those resources to stop our children from being gunned down daily on the streets of Chicago. Stop the chemical warfare raging against us in Philadelphia, Little Rock, Detroit, South Central L.A.,  Oakland and a hundred other cities across America.

You talk about us standing around and watching a despot murder hundreds of people. I don’t understand your question when you stand around every week and watch a thousand gunned down in your own neighborhoods.

Let me end by saying that our ‘so-called OBLIGATION TO PROTECT THE INNOCENT’ has never quite panned out. We have become the world’s bullies. We are the most hypocritical nation on earth. We say we are about love, truth, peace, freedom and justice but we demonstrate hatred, lewdness, slander, murder, theft and everything that harms. America has become the world’s terrorist dropping drones on innocent people.  We are hypocritically the pot, calling the kettle black. We are supposed to be a Christian nation that abides by the laws handed down from God that direct us ‘not to murder’. The Sixth Commandment says, “THOU SHALL NOT KILL”.  Period! There are no caveats or exceptions to the rule. If we are to be Christ-Like then we have to stop making excuses for murder. It is a shame and a sin and it hurts my heart that we have become so callous. It hurts my heart that we can take someone’s life so easily.

Finally, what do I suggest? I suggest that reconsider the principle of ‘as you sew, so shall you reap’. I suggest we remember we are willfully taking human lives and I suggest we stop killing people now, because eventually they will start killing us.

~Ty Gray-EL is an author, poet and activist who escaped from a federal prison plantation through the back fence of Education more than 30 years ago. He escaped under threat of death for disclosing that education is the key to unlock all the gates in every facility on every plantation. He is the Chief Creative Officer of Gray-EL Edutainment Ministry Services, a Cultural Enrichment Ministry dedicated to raising levels of consciousness and self-esteem among African Americans. He lives with his wife on the outskirts of Washington DC. in Prince Georges County MD. He can be reached at www.breathofmyancestors.com