And, by the way, I technically held the honorific "the Honorable" for a year afterward, lol. Not that I ever put it on anything haha.

lets please stay out of another war. Why does the US need to involved here? Why don't some regional powers step up? BS, no Americans need to die for this.

Yeah, what's going on in Syria is messed up. But what the F is the US gunna do that will help in any way whatsoever? As soon as we drop one bomb, we're the god damn assholes of the world. Fuck it.

What pisses me off:

1) US conservatives who support Syrian intervention for one reason alone--Obama isn't intervening. It is simple partisan BS pure and simple and in some cases hypocritical.

2) US liberals who whine and piss and moan that we have some kind of moral obligation to intervene, but guess what they're going to say when bombs drop and innocent people die? Are these the same liberal dumb asses that are so bent out of shape whenever someone in NW pakistan is killed by a drone?

Dirge, your mistake is to say "let's stay out of another war."

There is no "let's." The war has already been going on for two years. We have had this war going on for two years and 100,000 people have died. The line on the map that separates us from them has no moral significance. The war started in 2011.

Think less about the Americans that have to die, think more about the Syrians who are already dead and dying right now.

Dirge, I am left-wing at least according to the political compass but you will find me consistently in favor of the principle of humanitarian intervention. Bad consequences should be avoided, castigated, regretted, and learned from to be minimized the next time, but I am fully aware that our intervention would make us directly involved in innocents' death.

However, by doing nothing and watching still more innocents die, we are just as culpable.

Again, the war is already upon us. We don't get to make it go away by deciding to ignore it. It's real. It's too late to say "we don't want another war."

We have another war. Again, we have had it since 2011.

sorry, you lost me at "your mistake."

So 1) what are Americans going to do that will "fix" this problem? and 2) why is the responsibility of the US? and 3) I'll decide what I will think about and be concerned about, and young US soldiers dying for people that hate our guts does concern me whether you think it should or not.

"the war is upon us"

depends how you define "us"

Thucydides, your mistake is liberal imperialism.

Thucy, I've fundraised for Special Olympics and Invisible Children and a number of local organizations since I got into high school. I'm no stranger to the things I *can* do, there's just a ton I can't do.

I do not see a reason to go into Syria. Sorry. The cons outweigh the pros. I'd love to say we are the savior of the entire world but the last 30 years point me in a different direction.

There is only one "us". Hint, it's not U.S.

Bo: The last thirty years need have nothing to do with the next thirty.

Dirge:

liberal imperialism would be invading a country and instructing them that they will now, on pain of death, obey laws that say they have to write a constitution and set up a supreme court and deregulate their airlines.

invading a country for the purposes of disarming belligerents is not imperialism - it is intervention.

sovereignty is lost when you are no longer a legitimate sovereign.

The world governments disagree with that assessment, and whether you or I like it or not, ain't a darn thang we can do son.

The last thirty years really should be the last 48-9 so I can include Vietnam. The last "successful" imperial military campaign by the United States was in World War II. Since then the First Gulf War was our only relative success and even that can be argued. Holding the Berlin line in the Cold War doesn't really apply as far as I'm concerned.

There was a time to intervene in Syria. It was about two years ago when the war was still largely a popular uprising against Assad, comparable to what happened in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. Back then there were secularists in the streets throwing flowers on the American ambassador. It happened, look it up.

Now, however, Syria is a hellhole where victory by either side, Assad or the now Islamist-dominated rebels, would be a disaster, if victory is even still possible. The Syrian state and Syrian society are broken beyond repair.

However, the issue cannot be ignored. We can't let Jordan collapse in the wake of Syria melting away into anarchy. We have to defend Turkey due to NATO commitments. We have to back Israel in the event Assad attacks it. We have to do our best to keep the war from spreading to Iraq. We have to uphold the international norm that bans all uses of chemical weapons. We have to place this in the context of Iran's strategic ambitions. And so on and so forth.

Some sort of intervention, unfortunately, is probably inevitable. If Obama hadn't dithered and had Hillary Clinton keep calling Assad a reformer for months and months after the war began we may be in a different place, but you can't change the past and there's no point dwelling on it. History will ultimately judge the administration on its handling of Syria, and the history is still being written.

We can't stay out, we dare not get in. But by staying out we may just be setting the stage for a general Middle East war as the conflict spreads and escalates. Or that may happen because we get in. Or maybe neither. Or part of both. I don't envy our policy makers right now.

'There is only one "us". Hint, it's not U.S.'

k thuc, do the "us" you are referring to feel/believe your are one of them?

"invading a country for the purposes of disarming belligerents is not imperialism - it is intervention." -Thucydid

hm, is that really what you believe is going to happen? The US military is going to go to Syria and tell the muslim off-white people there to stop acting badly and put down their weapons, and that's that? You live in a wonderful fantasy world. But it is not reality.

Also let's have a sad reflection on how no talk at all is being given about Obama getting authorization from Congress should he decide to intervene in Syria. In the Libya intervention he tore down the last vestiges of restraint on the presidency when it comes to making war. Bombing Syria would just confirm that, barring a colossal shift in policy on his part.

Yes, Obama is definitely the first President to go to war without Congressional approval in the last 70 years.

I can't even get mad. You're just so wholly ignorant of the subject. Here's a good place to start. This isn't a partisan issue, or it shouldn't be.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/356978/obama-embraces-imperial-presidency-john-fund

No, I don't live in a fantasy world. If we did what you describe, in real life, to get them to disarm, we would probably have to shoot and blow up a bunch of them before they started to disarm themselves after we ask.

"k thuc, do the "us" you are referring to feel/believe your are one of them?"

For this, I'm not sure what you mean. If it means, do other people recognize me as a person as well? In general yes, though there are probably some terrifying people out there that recognize very few people as persons.

It's not a partisan issue? Then you'd have mentioned that GW Bush, Clinton, GHW Bush, Reagan, Carter, and Johnson all did it too.

Come on man.

Again, this is just your ignorance shining through.

My ignorance? That's your best point to make? My ignorance? You know Sbyvl does the same thing. What's that say about you?

The United States hasn't declared war the way we are supposed to since World War II. If it's not a partisan issue, which it's not, then say that.

You don't need an old-timey declaration of war. You need an authorization of force from Congress, which is effectively the same thing and acknowledged as such by the law and scholarly literature. Johnson got that in the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution for Vietnam. George H. W. Bush got that for the Gulf War, but not in the invasion of Panama because it was Panama that declared war on us. George W. Bush got explicit Congressional authorization for both the Iraq War and the War on Terror, which even today provides the legal underpinning for the effort both in Afghanistan and all over the world.

When Obama decided to intervene in Libya he did so without involving Congress at all, relying instead of the UN and the Arab League(!) to provide legitimacy. He then did not even follow the terms of the War Powers Act, which was always just a fig-leaf for the imperial presidency anyhow but at least kept up the appearance that our president was not the Warlord of Earth. Intervening in Syria without Congressional approval would just be the confirmation that the limits on presidential warmaking powers, which have been steadily eroding for almost a century, have vanished completely.

Dude, you simply do not know what you're talking about. This may come as a shock, but just because you're getting towards the end of high school does not mean you know everything.

Thucy - I get that the war is ongoing at it will not go away if we ignore it. But that doesn't mean that military action is the 'something' we have to do. One estimate I heard yesterday is that a no fly zone would cost £1bn a month to enforce. We always seem to find the big money when we wage war. How about spending some of that money setting up military hospitals in neighbouring countries and/or hospital ships and opening up an air corridor to evacuate the wounded?

I know this runs the risk of having a civil war decided by other outside influences rather than the US/UK. An intervention may be welcome by some sides now, but soon enough we will be part of the problem and not the solution.

I'd hope that large scale humanitarian assistance will become a blue print of how to react to an international crisis.

The core of my answer is that neither side, nor the world, can get the impression that you are allowed to have a war like what they are doing. There has to be enforcement of international law, or else international, which has been under construction for a hundred years if not more, falls apart.

http://mondoweiss.net/2013/08/dos-and-donts-for-progressives-discussing-syria.html

The US breaks international law pretty frequently. Enforcing that is the UN's job, but we don't let the UN do its job. That's our fault.

You're right, it is. It's our national shame.

When America is dead and gone, history will judge us harshly for holding the world back for so long in that regard.

As it should. The fact that we control the UN, though, doesn't force us to do the UN's job. We should back out of the Middle East and back out of the UN all the same. Otherwise we'll have votes like the one hecks posted regarding Bush's decision to go to Iraq a in 2003, where 40+ nations said no and a select few said yes. Those select few ignored the vote and went ahead with it and no one cared.

Those 40+ ought to tell the US, UK, Russia, China, and maybe Israel, Germany, and France to put up or shut up.