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So far the Mahdi has played the Syria business pretty cleverly. The US wants to get rid of Iran's only ally in the region for a number of reasons chief among them depriving Syria of a naval replenishment base in the Med. Iran has no real navy but has suddenly decided it is going to build a blue water capability. The US knows the Iranians are going to have some sort of nuclear capability in the near term and nuclear capability plus a blue water navy means developing some sort of asymmetric threat system to use on the US and other infidels (EMP or something like it perhaps). So time to torpedo the Syrian-Iranian axis. The Saudis see things the same way. They are happy to collaborate in rallying the merry men who were shooting at us in iraq a few years ago. Arm them anew and send them off to crusdae against he Alawite heretics. When the Assad regime goes down or compresses into a small corner of Syria and the rest of Syria turns into fragmented chaos the Hezbollah may find themselves between a lot of Sunni with blood in their eye and Israel. At the least the Hezbollah will have to cut a lower profile ant the best they will get the Alawite treatment. A Middle East without Assad, without an Iranian ally and without Hezbollah will be a bit safer a quieter for a while. Of course once Iran gets a nuclear capability all of the Arab states and Turkey will have to have nukes as well and we lknow where that is likely to lead to. But the Mahdi will be out of office by them and it will be someone else problem.

However direct western involvement in Syria is about a hundred times dumber than the US adventure in nation building in Iraq. If BHO signs off on that one he is a lot dumber than I have thought he was.

The situation does not require our intervention because Turkey and the GCC are making progress. The prospect of Chemical weapons may require US very special trained forces for containment.

There is a strategic plan but we have not been provided details.