socalgop: “I would take a critical eye to anything coming out from any of the combatants.”
Exactly! There are no good sides in this conflict, and there are no vital American national interests at stake. As much as the photo tears at my heart, we cannot fix this. Well, we could conceivably fix it, but it would take far, far more than lobbing a few cruise missiles.
Unless we’re willing to fight wars like we did in WWII, i.e. substantial numbers of boots on the ground, total annihilation of all opposing forces—overwhelming force—and a post combat military occupation similar to MacArthur and the Japanese (none of this crap about letting the Muslims recreate an Islamic state a la Iraq), we’ll continue to lose. None of this is even remotely possible given our current leadership in D.C., and that’s assuming Syria threatened US survival, which it doesn’t.
There are bad things happening to good people all over the globe, and America is not the world’s police. Even if we wanted to stick our noses in everyone’s conflicts, we can’t afford to. George Washington was right when he said we should avoid entangling alliances.
I think I’ll take the Assad side which is protecting the Coptic Christians. It really irritates me that our tax dollars just sent weapons to the rebels. Disgusting.