US has no “moral high ground” for strikes against Syria

I think most of us have heard about the plans to bomb Syria, headed by President Barack Obama and soon to be supported by most of Congress. Andy why must we bomb Syria? According to our president and others it is a moral obligation over Bashar al-Assad’s human rights violations caused by his use of chemical weapons.

But what is not being discussed is needless deaths in the US caused by a lack of health care for poor people.

In a report from Columbia University;

How many U.S. deaths are caused by poverty, low levels of education and other social factors? A new study finds that the numbers are in the same range as deaths from heart attacks and stroke...

The investigators found that approximately 245,000 deaths in the United States in the year 2000 were attributable to low levels of education, 176,000 to racial segregation, 162,000 to low social support, 133,000 to individual-level poverty, 119,000 to income inequality, and 39,000 to area-level poverty.
Overall, 4.5% of U.S. deaths were found to be attributable to poverty—midway between previous estimates of 6% and 2.3%. However the risks associated with both poverty and low education were higher for individuals aged 25 to 64 than for those 65 or older.

Those over 65 get Medicare—for now. So while US politicians blather on about Assad killing innocent women and children and how a moral stand must be taken, many of these same politicians have tried to stop Obamacare, which is only a modest attempt to stop the poor from dying early—needlessly.

Secretary of State John Kerry has been one of those who have used the “moral” argument for deadly force in Syria. According to NBC;

Kerry said American inaction would “live in infamy,” and he drew analogies to black marks of history — the appeasement of Adolf Hitler before World War II and the U.S.’ refusal to accept a boat full of Jewish refugees from Germany in 1939.

“There are moments when you have to make a decision,” he said. “And I think this is one of those moments.”

He added: "A lot of people out in the Middle East count on us."

"They count on us to help them be able to transition," Kerry said. 

Others, such as Kansas’ Senator Mike Pompeo, are consistently looking at financial and political concerns over humanity concerns. According to Politico;

“I’m going to make the case that the president’s response needs to be much more vigorous, much more robust and actually consider America’s strategic and national interests in the Middle East more broadly in Syria than some simple few missiles being lobbed into Syria,” Pompeo said. “We need a strategic vision with real, definable and achievable goals, and I’m hopeful that Congress can help the president get there over this next week.”

Pompeo appeared on CNN with Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, who was also in the briefing on Sunday and said he hopes Congress will give the president some “latitude” to act in Syria while maintaining a narrow focus.

“I think you can have both. I think that the president must be given latitude, but I agree with my colleague. I think that we have a long-standing interest. It’s not simply about a strike for the moment. You have Iran watching; you have elements that are watching; you have Hezbollah now in Syria; [President Bashar] Assad has unfortunately become Iran’s proxy. And I think we have strategic interests,” Engel said.

And Pompeo takes a straight forward business approach to letting poor people die from a lack of medical care. From his own web site;

"The Administration assured the American people that Obamacare was going to solve the problems plaguing our health care system--despite warnings even from politicians who supported the law. Those who've expressed worries about a train wreck have been proven right.
"Delaying the employer mandate is just delaying the harm this terrible law will bring to consumers, businesses, and health care professionals. The right answer is to repeal the law, not delay it. Let's just scrap it."

So the concern over costs to businesses and the health care professionals far outweigh the needs of poor people for life saving health care. And he is not alone in this position. The US House of Representatives have voted about 40 times to overturn Obamacare. This government today has waged a war against poor people, cutting funds for public education and reducing government safety nets for those who lose their jobs or who are poor to begin with. Every government agency that is designed to aid poor people in this country has either had their budgets cut or have been repealed completely. Even the right to vote has been restricted in many states by “voter ID” laws and other so called “anti-voter fraud” laws that have kept mostly minorities and some poor people from voting. Kansas is among the states that have passed such laws. In Kansas about 15,000 people were blocked from voting by the new restrictions, which is more than ten times the amount of alleged voter fraud figures used to justify passing these new laws.

Of all these violations of people’s rights here in the US, probably the worst are the unnecessary deaths to the poor due to government neglect on any kind of efforts to insure them.

So how can a country that has committed human rights abuses against its own people seriously claim to be acting on a moral and humane obligation to wage militarily strikes at an inhumane villain?

It is long past time to challenge the whole idea that this is about human rights. It is about advancing the strategic interests of the imperialist powers such as the US and Europe. This is not about human rights at all and it is time that people in this country face up to that fact.  

-សតិវ អតុ