What Is the Red Line?

Sara el Yafi posted this September 11, 2013

I have personally been trying to wrap my head around this sudden raging wake-up call regarding the tragedy of chemical weapons having killed innocent people, not just on behalf of the U.S. administration and its European allies, but on behalf of the media and the entire world as well.

The fact that we soberly believe that other types of weapons that kill people do not necessitate the outrage of chemical weapons is just another pointer to the mediocrity of the world we live in.

They say “it’s a red line“, but it’s a red line for selectively-conscious people who hide behind the mask of being pragmatic and “realistic.”

I give my third finger (middle finger) to your realism.

Your realism is the reason why the world is so slow at getting any better: we learn to accept perverted violence as the norm of every conflict infused with the debauched manifestation that violent self-defense makes it all even more legitimate.

Why isn’t war the red line for the international community?

Is it because the ones voting for the “right to bear arms” are people who have not the slightest idea how gruesome and god-awful war is for citizens?

They are people who have never witnessed the atrocities of war as a vulnerable civilian as they sit locked in the shelter with rotting dead bodies.

They are people who have never endured the non dignifying horror and the crippling fear of being held at gunpoint for being in the wrong place at the wrong time;

They are people who have never been shelled by indomitable machinery in their own homes, nor known the feeling of being obliged to literally run away from their own homes only to wander the streets like dirty rats dwelling in garbage and abhorred by the world for being burdens; they are people who have never smelled the stench of burning flesh and never had to look for their brother in a stockpile of cadavers; they are people who have never seen the face of terror nor what kind of debilitating damage it does to your psyche in the long run and they are people who have never held their dying child in their arms.

And those are the “realists” of this world.

If chemical weapons is a red line for Obama, that’s because he’s got a political agenda and he’s at the head of the dirtiest game that is international politics that has been set by manipulative predecessors…

But what is your agenda, you as a human being?

What is your goddamn agenda? The red line should be weapons used against any people everywhere.

The red line should be war. That is the real red line.

And that should be the red line for every person who has the decency of calling themselves a human being.