YARBROUGH: Why we won’t help either side in Syria

Dick Yarbrough

Dick Yarbrough

Dear Syrian Rebels: I thought I’d take a minute to correspond with you as you resume your efforts to overthrow Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. You are no doubt disappointed that the United States government chose not to come to your aid as they promised. There is a good reason and that is my purpose in writing you. Although I am not an official of the United States government, I am part of a group known as We the Unwashed. Put the blame squarely on us.

The President of the United States and his minions as well as a bunch of out-of-touch and self-important politicians forgot to include us in their war planning. Because we live outside the Beltway, they think We the Unwashed are a bunch of unsophisticated dummies who wouldn’t understand. Bad mistake.




We watched President Jimmy Carter engineer the downfall of the Shah of Iran in 1979 and you see how that turned out. We’ve been paying for that one ever since. Carter’s apologists will say he was taking the moral high ground. All I know is that the Iranians took our embassy in return and have spewed anti-American rhetoric at us ever since. So much for moral high grounds.


We believe you just want our money and our expertise to help you take over Syria and then we will have to endure marching in the streets and condemning the U.S. because that seems to be the modus operandi in your part of the world. I saw where Al-Zawahiri, the successor to the late and unlamented Osama bin Laden, said he didn’t want his jihadists who are fighting against the Assad regime to “compromise” with moderate rebel factions. He wants to kill Americans and he wants your help. And, I assume, he wants us to help pay for the privilege. Geez. I can’t wait to see him sleeping with the fishes.


Then there is the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin has made our president, Barack Obama, look like a Chicago community organizer way out of his league. That doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence, does it? Putin even called John Kerry, our Secretary of State, a liar. I would like to have seen him say that if Ronald Reagan was still around.


Email columnist Dick Yarbrough at yarb2400@bellsouth.net.