This segment from Rachel Maddow's show this Thursday evening is something we definitely have not seen nearly enough of following the Obama administration's request for Congressional approval for military intervention in Syria.
We have members of Congress on all sides of the aisle telling the media that they would like the United States to intervene in Syria -- just not in a way that involves dropping bombs on someone's head -- and discussing what those alternatives might be.
As Maddow noted, "the list of concrete, actual proposals is not all that long, but it is growing and it turns out it's growing in a nonpartisan, non-left/right split kind of way. The ideas are coming from everywhere."
Maddow talked to Ammesty Intenational's Frank Jannuzi about what our options are with dealing with the humanitarian crisis along with the war crimes committed during this civil war in Syria.
As I said, it would really be nice to see more and not less segments like this one on cable television. Here are some of the articles they discussed offering some alternatives to the bomb-dropping.
Former U.N. inspector Hans Blix suggested that the world should put pressure on countries shipping weapons to either side of the civil war and the United States should use what leverage we have with those suppliers to start an arms embargo.
The Washington Post published this piece: Three big ways the U.S. could help Syrians without using the military.
And as Rachel noted, the countries who have taken in millions of refugees are making these urgent pleas for more help from the rest of the world which they have not been getting, as this crisis has been largely ignored.
MADDOW: The countries that have already taken in 2 million of Syria's refugees are themselves making an urgent appeal just for aide from the rest of the world to help those other countries handle the millions of people inflow that they are dealing with essentially all on their own.
As she reminded everyone during the segment, "there's a lot of things that can be done other than missiles and bombs. The question is whether any of it will work in any meaningful sense."
I say we do our best to find out before we find ourselves in yet another war in the Middle East.
