Who is crying for the victims of the US?

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the use of chemical weapons and how barbaric it is. I had the same reaction when ISIS decided to go Hollywood and behead their victims while videotaping the execution.

I certainly sympathize and understand Donald Trump’s disgust when he viewed the photos of children suffering and dying from the chemical attack in Idlib. I can also sympathize with his adherence to that convenient and colorful Red Line in the sand. Politically, he had to find someone to blame and Syrian President Assad was it. I have no doubt that Trump’s approval ratings will now rise.

It is true that we, the civilized Western societies, used to also be barbaric in how we treated, or more accurately, killed others. Why it seems like only yesterday that the US was using sarin gas in Laos, wiping out a whole village of people as well as agent orange in Vietnam. It is true that the US once supplied Saddam Hussein with chemical weapons to use on Iran. It is also true that the US has an enormous stockpile of biological and chemical weapons of its own . . . But, what the hell, it’s us the “Exceptionals.”

We in the West have come a long way since the 1960s and 70s. When we kill, it is done humanely. Children do not suffer. When our missiles hit, there is an explosion and body parts go flying all over. The children never will know what hit them. And, there will be no photos of them.

Another advance we’ve made is that we do not even have to be present when we kill. We can sit in a room thousands of miles away, look at our computer monitors tracking the targets, press a button and BOOM it’s over. We can then go home and eat dinner with our family.

How’s that for civilized killing?

Are any of our teary-eyed presidents ever affected by those thoughts?

Dave Alpert has masters degrees in social work, educational administration, and psychology. He spent his career working with troubled inner city adolescents.