Op-ed: 
Even heroes fall from grace 
By: Diane Sori


How sad it is when old warriors...old heroes...come to the realization that their day in the sun is over...their deeds remembered but NO longer their defining glory. How sad, but with courage and honor, some step down from positions held knowing the next generation of heroes and warriors stands at the gates ready to enter the battle.

But what's even sadder is when an old warrior and hero refuses to see the signs...refuses to step down as vanity takes over for common sense...and so the old warrior and hero carries on in a misguided attempt to capture their former glory, but instead their stubbornness defines them as an irrelevant fool...or worse.

Senator John McCain will always be a hero...a man of unquestionable valor who did during the Viet Nam War what few men would do...staying behind with his men knowing the horrors that awaited him...refusing his ticket home by honoring his oath of service. For this John McCain will always be a hero and this will NEVER be taken away from him.

But now this once great man has lost his way. Calling him a RINO is NOT quite right for he still is a man of conviction but his convictions have now become clouded NOT with age but with NOT understanding the true motives of the enemy we face today. Overstepping his bounds doing what his heart tells him to do instead of thinking his actions through...his actions and their ramifications...might take our country to a place we should NOT go nor should we be.

And so John McCain took it upon himself to try to broker an end to Syria's civil war by taking sides in a war where one side is as bad as the other. Forgetting the complexity of what's happening there..forgetting that this media so-called 'conflict' has already claimed almost 80,000 lives and counting... forgetting that of those deaths nearly 80% are civilians...forgetting that this 'conflict' has created more than a million refugees who have fled to neighboring countries...forgetting that both sides did this...both sides.

A million people without a home...a million people facing abject poverty...a million people with a score to settle for the nightmare engulfing their homeland these last two years has been fueled NOT from insiders... NOT from Syrians...but from foreign fighters, a majority of whom came from other conflicts in other countries...foreign fighters connected directly to or owing allegiance to al-Qaeda...the al-Qaeda that hides
behind masks and scarfs cowards that they are.

And these are the rebels who John McCain met with...rebels calling themselves the Free Syrian Army...just one of a group of rebels fighting the Assad regime but a group with strong ties to al-Qaeda. 
 

And with formal international discussions on Syria's civil war fast approaching (with US and Russia participating)...discussions whose goal is to create a framework for an interim government and arrange a cease-fire..this old warrior and hero had NO business meeting with forces seeking to overthrow Assad's government or meeting with anyone for that matter for he NOT a diplomat nor was he acting in official capacity...just a busy-buddy sticking his nose in where it didn't belong.

And something else McCain forgets...there are NO good guys in this war for most of the rebels are NOT interested in democracy or anything even close for their goal is to set-up an islamic theocracy in Syria complete with sharia law making a bad situation even worse. And Assad's regime is NO better for they are a brutal, anti-American government that has been involved in developing their own chemical and biological weapons...developing and using them if current reports are correct.

And the bottom line is that whomever eventually wins in Syria, the US gains NOTHING from the situation.

And John McCain, US Senator McCain, has now put himself into the middle of something we need to stay out of. Brokering deals with rebel leaders...rebel leaders who want the US to establish a no-fly zone, who want US anti-aircraft weapons and US airstrikes on Assad's forces, who want US airstrikes on Hezbollah compounds in Lebanon who are supporting Assad's forces...is NOT his job nor his place. And John McCain, in very misguided wisdom, leans towards giving them all they want, ignoring the bottom line that the Free Syrian Army wants the US to get involved in their civil war...for the US to fight their battles for them.

Let's really understand what's going on here...these people, these muslim barbarians, want our county to get involved in their county's civil war and John McCain, former warrior and hero, is willing to allow that to happen. McCain should know very well that airstrikes lead to boots on the ground, and boots on the ground lead to more American deaths at the hands of those very people out to kill us.

NO...these muslims in Syria are NOT worth one drop of American blood and except for Israel, the one Middle Eastern country that we must stand by and support at all costs...and with both sides in Syria being America's enemy...we need to let these muslims wage war on each other and kill each other off if need be, for these people on either side of the Syrian 'conflict' are NOT worth American blood...American blood that John McCain is seriously considering and recommending we give them.

And so like many old warriors and heroes, John McCain needs to realize that his day in the sun is over and that he needs to let our new warriors and heroes, the ones prepared for, as LTC Allen West says, 'the 21st century battlefield', let them make the decisions that could affect us all.