The United States has a long history of “helping” others. It appears the Syrian people are next on the list. I oppose the U.S. helping the Syrian people, and I suspect the Syrian people do too.

Some historical context:

The first instance of the U.S. helping people involved Native Americans. The U.S., in a benevolent effort to civilize “poor,” “backward” people who were perfectly happy living as they were, nearly exterminated them. Those who survived were “helped” again and again, until they were reduced in such numbers and their cultures so obliterated that the stragglers were put out to pasture in concentration camps called “reservations.”

The nation “helped” most in the Americas is Haiti. The U.S. has intervened there more than anywhere else in the world. Haiti is the poorest, most desperate, most languishing nation in the Western Hemisphere. So, it would seem, the more the U.S. “helps,” the worse things get.

In my lifetime, the U.S. has done lots of “helping.” In Vietnam, the U.S. helped the Vietnamese repel Communism. American troops sometimes went village to village, burning them down. This was not purposeful destruction of innocent civilians’ ways of life. No. As our military leaders would explain it, it was necessary to burn down the villages in order to “save” them.

Save. As in “help.”

Then, of course, there came Iraq, where the U.S. imposed a decade of sanctions to “help” Iraqis depose Saddam Hussein. Yet, each time anyone attempted to rise up against him—the Kurds in the North or the Sunnis in the South—the U.S. stood idly by as the resisters were obliterated. The sanctions imposed to “help” the Iraqis prevented necessary aid and medicine into the country, as well as technologies to repair the water treatment facilities that the U.S. bombed contrary to international law. As a consequence, more than 500,000 children under the age of six died in just a decade.

U.S. “help” in Iraq murdered a whole generation. Children. Gone.

Also, just as in the former Yugoslavia—where the U.S. “helped” an ally back to the Stone Age—the U.S. used depleted uranium in its armaments, a low-level radioactive material that gets disbursed into the air to be breathed in, causing long-term health damage for entire populations (to include U.S. troops on the ground). No one uses depleted uranium but the U.S.

Just like no one ever used nuclear arms against an opponent except the U.S.

But, back to Iraq. The U.S. helped them. Now, after a decade and a half, in some places, thanks to multi-billion-dollar contracts to Haliburton, the electricity sometimes stays on for a few days at a time.

Sometimes.

Now, the U.S. wants to “help” the Syrian people because their terrible tyrant has allegedly used Sarin gas to kill a small fraction of the children that U.S. sanctions killed in Iraq (half a million, remember that former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright confirmed was worth it, if only Saddam Hussein was deposed). To stop Syria’s president from Sarin gas on his own people, the U.S. proposes dropping bombs (depleted Uranium) on his people.

A few points to be made here.

First, apart from any debate as to whether Syria’s government used Sarin gas (it seems really convenient that the attack was launched a year and a day after President Obama’s “red line” comment, and that it was launched in an area where U.S. intelligence has been sneaking aid to rebels), are the children killed by the chemical attack any more dead than the children who are going to be killed by falling U.S. bombs or cruise missiles?

Second, isn’t President Obama the same guy who authorized drone attacks on Americans overseas? And are those dead Americans any more or less dead than the Syrians killed by Sarin gas?

Third, when did the U.S. become concerned over the lives of children?

Fourth, should the only nation to used depleted uranium—on its own troops—waggle its finger at Syria?

And fifth, why is it that when the U.S. decides to “help” somebody, help involves cruise missiles and bombs? Why can’t the U.S. just send these people some quilts and cans of soup?

And I think this speaks now to something far more fundamentally flawed in the thinking of the U.S. government. It doesn’t know how to do anything except destroy. Its whole reason for existence is to crush, kill, maim, obliterate.

That’s pathological.

The United States is a sociopath, armed to the teeth, stomping around the global neighborhood. This sociopath has set its sites on the Syrian regime, which will, then, involve destroying Syria’s infrastructure and the standard of living of the Syria people.

Even if the U.S. is successful at stopping the Syrian regime, we are confronted with a far more disturbing question:

Who will stop the United States government?