THE ANGRY CONSERVATIVE
Opinion Columnist

If you have been on the internet in the past few days, you have seen that Trump ordered a missile strike on Syria after a nerve gas attack was used on the country’s citizens. Of course, the memes and speculations and rumors followed. Let’s remove the keyboard GI opinions and then all the rumors. Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty of it all.

First off, this will not cause a third world war. Why would it? In the days following our strike, there has been no counter strike against us or any of our allies by Syria or any other nation. Actually there has been no real hostility of any kind on us since the strike. Yeah some Russian ships moved in our direction, but that does not mean anything. They would have fired by now if they were going to strike us. What’s to say they weren’t already moving that direction? Media hype. Like us moving ships near North Korea. Every spring when Kim thaws out from winter, he starts moving military equipment; us millennials call that ‘flexing.’ South Korea is our ally, so we flexed back. It’s just a spitting contest.

So why is the strike okay? First off, let’s set aside political bias. Obama worked with Russia to get rid of all chemical weapons like that. We believed the weapons were gone. Obviously, they aren’t. They crossed an uncrossable line by going back to those weapons and using them. To reference the Charlie Murphy/Rick James sketch, the Syrian regime is now “habitual line-steppers.”

We saw video and photos of the results of a nerve gas attack that killed civilians. Children were killed. A father lost his twins; I believe they were nine-years-old. The world was outraged. Trump stood up for the children of Syria with his order.

Now, this is where people stand up and say something about how Trump did not want Syrian refugees here. What causes Syrian refugees? The regime and ISIS. They’re fleeing things like the nerve gas attack. So why don’t we just let them in so they’ll be safe? Sadly, nothing is that simple.

America has its own citizens who need help; our own state of Louisiana is extremely poor. We can barely take care of our nation. It would be like letting your children go hungry to feed and house the neighbors across Cane River. There’s no reason why people should have to live in the fear they do. They should be safe in their own homes, and, sadly, they are not because of the regime and ISIS. The citizens more than likely want to stay in their nation with their family friends instead of being separated and forced to move across the planet.

We Republicans cannot say we’re pro-life then stand by and let innocent people be gassed. A nerve gas attack is not the same as a shooting or some other attack where the victims die instantly. It’s a horrible way to die. We saw the videos of the people laying there shaking and twisting violently from the gas. It was as though the government there saw their citizens as vile cockroaches and decided to exterminate them. That same mindset is what drove the Nazis to try to eradicate the Jews. Surely no more needs to be said.

Overall, it makes me angry that the citizens of Syria have to fear their own government and fear ISIS. It should be the other way around. The citizens should have the ability to make their government fear them; that’s why voting and the second amendment is so important to us here. That is what does, or should, keep our government in check so we don’t have to live with that same fear.