What About the Children?

Today, as I have sat at my desk busily taking care of my business, I have had a little television on to keep me company. I usually just leave it on CNN when I do this and today was no exception. All day long they have analyzed, criticized, condemned and endorsed doing something about Syria. 

Now understand that I do not have access to any classified information; I don't have an inside informant; and have only briefly discussed the whole issue with just a couple of people. But, here is the back story as I understand it. The United States of America is a signatory of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction (Chemical Weapons Convention) . . . CWC for short. One hundred eighty-nine of the world's nations have signed the treaty and all but two have ratified it. The United States is one to have both signed and ratified the treaty. 

The CWC is not the first attempt at banning chemical weapons from the battlefield. The first attempt took place at the Hague in 1899.  However, in spite of their being banned they were widely used during WWI.  Then in 1925 the Geneva Protocol was adopted in which the world again affirmed the prohibition of Chemical weapons on the battlefields of the world.  

It is a credit to both the Allied and Axis forces that neither side resorted to their use during WWII.  Admittedly, Hitler and his regime did use gas in the death camps but he did not use it on the battlefield.  So we have (1) Hitler using gas in the death camps where he carried out his "Final Solution" to what he called the "Jewish problem;" (2) Saddam Hussein used it in the Iranian/Iraqi war on Iranians and again with the Kurds  (his own people) in the north; and (3) Bashar Hafez al-Assad used it on his own people on a large scale in August of 2013 killing about 1400 people about 500 of which were children. 

That's the background.  

Now I cannot and do not try and speak to the geo-political aspects of this. The main reason that I don't is because I cannot get the image of all those children, many the ages of my own grandchildren, laying on the ground wrapped in their burial clothes looking as if they are just taking a nap . . . but they are dead. 

The action of Assad is no worse or better than those of Saddam Hussein or Hitler. They are exactly the same. Disgustingly wicked and these men have become the faces of evil in our generation. It is the brutal disregard for the lives of children and snuffing out those lives with the very thing they must do to live, i.e., breathe, that lingers in my mind. For me the issue is a moral one not a political one. 

I am also not trying to defend or attack the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan nor am I too interested in the how of why we ended up fighting those wars and why it took so long. I suspect there is plenty there for us to be angry about and of which we are justified in being weary. But they are not the issue for me here. Let me add this has nothing to do with whether or not I like or dislike any President. It is all about an image that I cannot erase from my mind. The image of all those children dying by the very gasping for breathe they needed to live and all that as a result of their leader's choice to use Sarasin gas.  

Someone will say, "I am tired of the United States being the world's policeman." I am too but who do you suggest we get to take America's place? Who do you trust to make these decisions? The Russians or the Chinese? I find myself not asking why we are the world's policeman because I know the answer to that question. What I find myself asking is, "How is it under our watch it is always the children who seem pay the price?" 

Others will say, "Don't you know we are tired of war?" The answer is yes! I long for the days when men "shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore." (Isa. 2:4). But until God steps into history and "judges among the nations, and shall rebuke many people" wrong will need to be addressed by force.  But when that day of universal peace comes we need to remember that  "to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin" (James 4:17). Too often we equate sin with an action taken when it can be equally applied to actions not taken."  As Lincoln said,  "My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right." 

We all want to join together and sing the words to the old spiritual that says: 

Gonna lay down my sword and shield
Down by the riverside, Down by the riverside, Down by the river side

Gonna lay down my sword and shield
Down by the riverside, Down by the riverside, Down by the river side 

I ain't go study war no more, study war no more, ain't go study war no more.
I ain't go study war no more, study war no more, ain't go study oh war no more.

Others will say it is none of our business or it has nothing to do with our national interests or security. To you I will only quote Martin Niemöller . . . 

“First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out —
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out —
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out —
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out —
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me —
and there was no one left to speak out for me. ―”

As long as men like Bashar Hafez al-Assad are allowed to utilize whatever means they choose to hold on to their power the world will be a serious risk. To see those children lying there asleep in death as the result of one man's barbaric act and do nothing seems impossible to me. 

Hardly a day goes by that I do not get something on my Facebook page or in an email deploring the deaths of millions of unborn children through abortion.  People from virtually all walks of life raise their voices in protest; spend their time and their money trying to change the abortion laws; and marching in the streets to effect change and end the carnage of abortion on demand . . . as well they should.

But I must ask, where are those who will cry out for the hundreds of children who struggled to breath and with every breath drew nothing but death into their lungs? Is their death lessened because they are fewer in number?  Who will speak for them? Are they not also among the "innocents."  Must their deaths go unavenged because "we are tired of war?"

I've heard all the arguments why we should not get involved and they all make some sense and I would not argue with many of them and I might, in a perfect world actually agree with some of it. The world in which we live is not always if ever perfect, it is rarely safe and it is seldom fair but that does not absolve us of the responsibility to act on behalf of the innocent.

People die every day by means that are immoral. No war is moral but some causes are so just that they demand a warlike response. To put it bluntly (and biblically) some people are so wicked that they must be cut off from the land of the living. The guilty must pay  - from the mouth that issued the order to the hand that carried out the deed and all those who stand in the way - the guilty must pay! 

Again, I am not too interested in the politics, the economics, the logistics, legality or a whole bunch of other things we could throw into the mix. The truth is, whatever we do or we don't do, there will be consequences to the choice that is made.  Both action and inaction will have unforeseen consequences. But the question that must be answered is, "Is it the right thing to do?" Is it ethical? Is it morally correct? You'll have to decide . . . I already have.

 

Now for my friends taken with Prophecy:  Is it possible that the two wars in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, the saber rattling by Iran along with the general unrest in that part of the world is nothing less than the gathering clouds of Armageddon?