On December 8th, 2024, the Dictator Bashar al-Assad fled Syria, ending his brutal reign of tyranny and the 13 year Syrian Civil War.
Long-time readers and friends alike will recall my intense interest in Syria that has shaped my thinking in many ways, recounted in “From the Vault: My Dream for Syria, 2014 AD!”
As I was going over the news reports of Assad’s Fall and reconnecting with many old friends who shared my interest in the events of the war, I decided to take another look through the old vault…
And found this gem.
I wrote this piece 10-11 years ago. It may have at the end of 2013, or at the beginning of 2014, I don’t recall. For sure it was after my birthday in October, for I had turned 18.
This piece was written to be submitted as an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal, my favorite newspaper at the time.
In those pre-social media days (for me at least!), the Wall Street Journal was my go-to morning ritual…you break out the paper, you break out the Frosted Flakes, and you get your day started off right!
Those were days.
I was inspired by a 2013 Foreign Affairs article that recounted how the historian Frederick Kagan and his wife Kimberly Kagan helped General David Petraeus lay the groundwork for the Surge in Iraq, to win the war, and liberate the people from the Jihadi tyranny forever.
So I figured, if I got my Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal, the big whigs in Washington would read it like they read Kagan, and then the dominoes would fall, and the Good Guys would win, riding off into the sunset…
It didn’t exactly work out that way.
That’s ok, though.
My sentiments remain the same.
I’m older and wiser now, but the Spirit that animates this piece is animating me still.
So without further ado, on this New Year’s Eve, 2024, I give you the piece that wasn’t, published here for the first time…
WHY AN EIGHTEEN YEAR OLD AMERICAN SUPPORTS INTERVENTION
By Richard Barrett II
2014 AD
“‘I pledge allegiance to the flag, of the United States of America,” What do those words mean to you? To me they say ‘Thank you America, for your strength, your courage, and for our freedom, which has been a beacon to the world for 200 years.’”
So said the legendary American icon John Wayne said.
It is with those words in my heart that I write.
When John Wayne spoke them, it was 1979. Stagnation had brought the United States to its worst economic recession since the Great Depression.
Across the world, the threat of Communism loomed menacingly large, a system responsible for millions dead and millions more oppressed.
Americans were divided over the role of their nation in the world, having just come out of Vietnam. In those dark times, John Wayne reminded us who were.
Today, we face a similar situation. Whether it’s the recession that millions of Americans now face daily, or it’s the news of new horrors or atrocities across the globe, America is confused.
We have so many problems on all fronts; many say that we should just focus on the ones at home instead of the ones abroad.
Today, Americans talk of the Middle East, of the horror of Syria and al Qaeda’s comeback in Iraq.
“Why should we get involved?” many ask. “We’ve fought two wars; we’ve got a massive debt. We shouldn’t intervene.”
This is the majority consensus among most of America today.
I am an average eighteen year old American. My neighbors are veterans of the War in Afghanistan, and for them I have the utmost respect. I can vote to elect my representatives and am eligible for the selective service. And I say we should intervene.
Why?
Two years ago, I lived in Tucson Arizona. It is one of the three refugee ports that the UN sends those fleeing their homeland to in the United States. I was blessed to have the opportunity to work alongside many refugee families from the Middle East through an organization called Tucson Refugee Ministries. Originally, I thought I was helping them. But by the time I moved from Arizona, I realized that they were the ones that had helped me.
I worked with the children; I knew many.
There were the Somali kids, wild and hyper and energetic; they had fled the horror of the roving militias, lawlessness, and refugee camps of their native land.
There was eight year old girl Adey had an affinity for machetes, and one twelve year old boy, Nagib would take any opportunity to make mischief for the girls.
There was Gizal the Afghani, and eleven year old girl whose father had fought against the Soviets in the 1980s, and had left Afghanistan in 2003, settling in Turkey and Russia before coming to the United States.
When I asked her which her favorite place of all to live was, she looked at me with bright eyes filled with childhood happiness. “America!” she said. “I love America! I can even name all the state capitals!” and so she did, which I told her was more than I could do!
There was Mark the Iraqi Christian, who had fled Mosul, Iraq during the Iraq War. He loved to act immature, wearing a gangster baseball cap with bill ironed down and cheap sunglasses which he would frequently pop the lenses out of out.
There was his eight year old sister, Miriam. One day, while we were sitting down with the kids in discussion, she asked one of the counselors, “Why does there have to be war? I’m from Mosul, and there was lots of war and killing there.”
I could see in her eyes the unspeakable sadness as she asked the question. Her family had fled at the height of sectarian violence, where each new day could have been there last.
What had this little eight year old girl seen in her short life? You could tell form that little girl’s eyes that she had seen so much more evil than any eight year old should see.
All of these things left a deep impression upon me, but there was one family that influenced me the most.
There was a man named Malik, who was a Coptic Christian. We visited his house one day, and upon seeing me and my mom, a smile lit up his face like I had never seen. “Thank you for coming!” he said repeatedly.
He had come to the United States two months before, fleeing the Revolution that ousted strongman Hosni Mubarak. Sitting on the couch over a meal of noodles, he told us of his existence there.
Because of his religion, he was degraded throughout his life, crawling through the gutters to collect the garbage of the school’s third world sanitation system during religion classes at school as a child. He told us of how he was a pharmacist in Egypt, and with great embarrassment and shame he told us of how he was paid twelve dollars a month.
He told us of how after the Revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood would firebomb churches at will with no fear of reprisals. He then showed us a video from al Jazeera of a peaceful protest, attended by himself and his best friend, asking for government protection.
In the video, an Egyptian police car came and mowed down a man. Tears ran down his face.
“That was my best friend,” he said.
But the last straw, was when the Muslim Brotherhood called his house, and threatened to kill his eight year old son, Ki Ro-Los.
I looked down at the little boy sitting on the floor playing with his sister. He looked just like my eight year old brother.
When I turn on the news, and I see the statistics of 130,000 dead in Syria or hear of al Qaeda’s brutality in Fallujah and Ramadi, I think of my friends the refugees.
When I see the pictures of the kids that have been gassed to death, I see the Adey and Nagib, Mark and Miriam, Gizal and Ki-Ro-Los.
They’re more than statistics.
They’re somebody’s brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, fathers and mothers and best friends.
Someone loves them, and someone mourn over their deaths.
Some don’t even have anyone left to mourn them.
That’s why I support intervention in Syria and Iraq, because no one deserves to see the things the people there have seen. No one deserves to die for his race or religion, no matter whether they’re Christian, Jew, Sunni or Shia Muslim.
They’re the reason why I support the power of America across the globe. For five years now, we have disengaged as our role of arbitrator in the Middle East, with the hope that peace would reign without our power involved.
But it has not.
Only the power of America, unbridled and unashamed, is what stands between the evil of tyrants and terrorists and the innocence of the victims. It is for them that I write, my friends the refugees—the victims.
For those who escaped the horror of their homeland, and for those who did not.
They’re the reason why I support a strong America, active on the global stage militarily, economically, and politically, to make this world a better place for the innocent.
That’s why I support intervention.
Richard Barrett II is a eighteen year old homeschooled high school senior in Northern Virginia, whose parents gave him the assignment, as part of his homeschool curriculum, to volunteer as a mentor to middle eastern refugee children in the summer 2011, affording him an opportunity to work side by with children and their parents who had first-hand knowledge of the success and failures of United States interventions in their countries.
Sincerely,
Richard Barrett
12-31-2024
Re-created here at 6:17 PM, somewhere in the USA…
PULP FICTION RENAISSANCE 