Demonstrators Oppose U.S. Military Strike in Syria

About two dozen demonstrators stationed themselves at the four corners of a busy South Bethlehem intersection during Thursday’s evening rush hour to show their opposition to a possible U.S. military strike against Syria and to encourage others to do the same.

“Honk for Peace,” read a few of the signs the demonstrators held up as traffic passed through at Wyandotte and W. Third streets, near the south end of the Hill-to-Hill Bridge.

Quite a few passing motorists did honk their horns for the demonstrators, who were organized by the Lehigh Pocono Committee of Concern, better known as LEPOCO.

But not everyone who passed through the intersection agreed.

One young man stopped for a red light on Third Street in a red Ford Mustang yelled to demonstrators: “What about all the 100,000 people who have been slaughtered? Who is going to stop that? Not God. What about the children?”

None of the demonstrators chose to engage him.

President Obama is accusing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of using chemical weapons in an Aug. 21 attack that killed 1,400 people—many of them children—in a suburb of Damascus.

A civil war has raged in the country since April 2011, when demonstrators began to agitate against the rule of Assad, whose family has been in power since 1971. According to the United Nations, the death toll surpassed 100,000 people in June.

According to LEPOCO, U.S. military intervention will do nothing to resolve the Syrian civil war, which needs to be ended through political and diplomatic means.