Click on the Blue Words, Cry Havoc. Then hit the return button and come back for the rest of the story.
Cry Havoc

Those words, now referred to as “cliche” by Wikipedia, are from Act 3 of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. In that play, Shakespeare is referring to the ‘dogs of war’ as Mark Antony’s troops, battling Brutus and Cassius to avenge the death of Caesar.

My, my – do we not see a similar tragedy playing out on the steps of the Capital building in Washington, D.C. over the issue of how to deal with Assad and Syria?

So for those of you who have been in a coma for the past ten days or so, let’s recap:

On August 21st, nearly 1500 men, women & children were hit with Sarin gas by the government of Bashar al Assad. The regime launched the attack on a suburb of Damascus in the early hours, killing mostly individuals in basements trying to avoid falling victim to ordinary shelling.

In a speech on August 20, 2012, President Obama said this:

“We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized…that would change my calculus. That would change my equation.”

That would change my equation – it’s difficult to say exactly what that means. But over most of last week, there was an assumption that it means the use of retaliatory strikes on military targets in Syria by cruise missiles launched from American ships in the Mediterranean Sea. So let’s take a peek at a map of the middle east area and see what that looks like:

Obviously it wouldn’t be hard to access Syria for those ships. Obviously there would be fallout, political, economic and possibly physical, on the adjoining country of Lebanon, and potentially on Israel. The facts are by now fairly indisputable except to those apologists for the regime, primarily Russia and Republibertarian candidate Rand Paul. At a time when we should be having honest and factual debate, Rand suggests that the rebels bombed themselves in order to pin the blame on Assad. Guess it’s possible…but extremely unlikely … and tres gauche being verbalized by a sitting Senator in the United States Congress.

The Republicans won’t be back in town until next week, and they’re in no hurry to get dragged into this mess. Most are all over the map in response to the call for retaliation. But the reality is: by the time they debate it and vote, the impact will be lost and the misery will drag on in that unholy circle of hell called Damascus. Launching a few cruise missiles to blow up a few buildings that will likely kill a few – or many – civilians is a mistake. Nothing will change on the ground in the battle between Assad and his opposition. Nothing will change until one or the other emerges victorious, with the other side annihilated – along with lots more innocent civilians. But let’s take a step back away from this situation, and return to Julius Caesar.

In the play, Shakespeare explains to late 16th century Londoners how Julius Caesar, a decent and honorable man and leader of his country, was brought down politically and ultimately lethally by some jealous conspirators. The result was retaliation from the other side in the form of Marc Antony, his trusted army general, and Octavian, Caesar’s son. The retaliation was successful, leading to the deaths of the conspirators. But in the play he wrote 7 years later, Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare informs the masses about how the Antony/Octavian partnership fell apart, leading to just about everybody’s demise – except maybe the snake. By the way, if you aren’t interested in wading through the challenges inherent in Shakespeare, you can watch the old HBO series Rome to see how this tragedy took place. You can catch it on HBO-GO, and watch it on your Ipad.

And so, gentle readers, we take instruction from history and good theater. Here it is: from chaos comes only more chaos and misery, and in the end everybody dies and the empire falls.

The political football du jure is bombing Syria. Congress will return next week and likely vote down any retaliatory strike, amidst braying commentary and despicable posturing. As such, this means we will do as much for the Syrian people as we did for the Jews in Germany between 1933 and 1941. Thousands if not tens of thousands more Syrian citizens will be killed by their own government in the coming weeks and months. The opposition is radicalized, but frankly so is the rest of the middle east, in case you haven’t noticed. Egypt, Yemen, Libya – every country in which the “Arab Spring” took place has either returned to dictatorship or is now run by warlords. Saudi Arabia has been radical since its formation, but we don’t talk about that. But what about Turkey? Lebanon? Israel? Jordan? I find it difficult to believe that they will remain unscathed by this brouhaha. All this chaos will just produce more chaos, and the loss of life for innocent civilians. How does it end? More than likely with the implosion of nearly all the countries in the middle east, including Israel.

Sometimes I feel like the child version of the Woody Allen character, Alvy Singer, in Annie Hall. Recall the flashback scene when his mother takes him to the doctor because he’s depressed. Little Alvy says he’s depressed because the universe is expanding, and that means someday it will break apart and that will be the end of everything. His mother’s response? “What has the universe got to do with it? You’re here in Brooklyn! Brooklyn is not expanding!”

In my case, whatever happens in Syria, there is very little, if anything, I can do about it, other than to be like the soothsayer in Julius Caesar, whose famous line is: “Beware the Ides of March”. I say beware the implosion of countries that have unstable next door neighbors with nuclear weapons. Those nukes could end up in some very angry people’s hands, and then the universe will be expanding in Vero Beach, and most everywhere else in the U.S. of A. I know, there I go again: I just need to just get over it, right?

P.S. The .wav file at the beginning is from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, voiced by the wonderful Christopher Plummer. Just tidying up details…