CARLTON FLETCHER: Save some righteous indignation for home

I don’t mind stealing bread from the mouths of decadence.

— Temple of the Dog

Sometimes, when we’re deep into a conversation that might include words and phrases that leave themselves open for interpretation, it’s good to use qualifying statements.

Like, “Yes, I voted for Hillary Clinton, but you need to know that while I was in the voting booth there was a guy standing next to me with a gun to my head …”

That’s a suitable qualifier.

But some conversations don’t need qualifying statements. In fact, the use of such qualifiers in certain instances detracts from your statement way more than they add to it.

Here’s what I’ve been hearing a lot in the aftermath of the U.S. decision to launch tomahawk missiles into Syria after reliable evidence showed that the Syrian military had used deadly sarin gas against its own people: “President Trump was right to order a missile strike on Syria because they used that deadly gas on little babies in diapers.”

(Of course, given the “babies in diapers” addition, I can only surmise that those offering such statements got their report of the Syrian attacks from the same place, either an internet post or on talk radio.)

See, the horror of using sarin gas on anyone, even your worst enemy, is enough to warrant the swiftest and harshest response available by any civilized country. It doesn’t matter if the deadly nerve gas was used on grandmothers, grandfathers, grown women and men, criminals, lunatics, millionaires, cats, dogs, turtles or, yes, babies in diapers, it is an inhuman act. As thus, any strike that attempts to destroy the delivery system of that gas is, I think most of us agree, justified.

As for people who feel such qualifiers show their compassion for the most helpless of God’s creatures, I’d like to ask you to put that compassion to good use. It might take a little change in thinking, so put on your caps.

If your compassion goes out to small children in a counry that I daresay a great number of us could not even locate on a map — and, please, I’m not in any way implying that it shouldn’t — why not turn that concern for mankind into positive action right here where you live?

We reside in one of the poorest regions of the United States, a desert of poverty in a land of plenty. There are thousands upon thousands of children within easy driving distance who go to bed hungry at night, who suffer from lack of nutrition, lack of medical care, lack of decent housing. There are youngsters, not in some Middle Eastern or African nation we’re not that familiar with, but just across town who need food, clothing, electricity, love, attention.

There’s nothing wrong with feeling sympathy for and anger at the people who would take their aggression out on the weakest and most defenseless citizens this world knows. But do you have enough to go around for the weak and defenseless who live two counties over … or just on the other side of the river … or in the house at the end of the block?

We in America have a tendency to offer our support, our concern and our righteous indignation to those nameless and faceless victims who, despite the horrors of their deaths, are little more than symbols to politicians thousands of miles away who often use those deaths as justification for actions they take not in the name of the victims, but in the name of self-righteousness and political gain.

I don’t believe that’s the case in the retaliatory attack of the Syrian airport, and I pray I’m right. I weep for all 80 of the victims who died such brutal deaths in Syria, whether they were wearing diapers or big boy and girl clothes. But I also weep for the hungry children in our country … in our state … in our region … in our neighborhoods whose imminent deaths are just as horrifying insomuch as they come agonizingly slowly, bit by bit, minute by minute.

Saddest of all: We can actually do something to save these kids.

Email Carlton Fletcher at [email protected]. Follow @ABH_Fletcher on Twitter.