So, there’s a heat wave here in the Sonoran Desert. Gee, it gets hot in the desert in summer…imagine that. Three people died Sunday because they went hiking in 115 degree heat. The local government is begging people not to go hiking in the desert in a heat wave. Well, gosh, you’d think that to be pretty self-evident, right? People see these hikers and exclaim, “What were they thinking?! Don’t they remember the, what, ten people that died doing that last summer?!” But let’s talk about another desert fiasco—Syria.

Now, Syria is the equivalent of the United States government going hiking in the desert in the middle of a heat wave. Lots of people have died before doing that, over in Iraq. But, no, let’s repeat it again in Syria. What’s amazing is the SAME Americans that can see the foolishness of hiking in the desert in a heat wave cannot see the same foolishness of their own government doing the same thing in foreign policy. Again and again, we act like we just got accidently sucked into these wars. No, our government made the choice to engage in these foolhardy adventures. If it was just them hiking in the desert in reality, it would only be them that perished. But they drag the entire nation along on the hike and everyone BUT the government officials die during it.

In the same paper detailing all the tragic but very, very avoidable deaths of these hikers are calls for “doing something” about Orlando. Well, here’s a thought: How about staying indoors for a change? How about staying in our own borders for a change? Syria was a war we could have avoided, as are all of them. Syria is a war we can still avoid. But will we? I can hear the government already lacing up their hiking boots.

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