Syria - Not Again!

As of today, the drums of war are beating in Washington, with the world anxiously waiting to see what the US (the world's cop) will do about the latest horror in the Middle East.

Here we are many thousands of miles away, dependent on some of the countries in the area for our fuel, and those same countries aren't willing to commit their own material and personnel resources to solve the problem that will, in the end, spill over to them, too.

So we wait.

OK.  Someone in Syria launched a chemical attack.  Many people died.  But far more than that have already died by conventional attacks.  So what makes this that much worse?  It's because we have set an arbitrary line in the sand.  What if it was the rebels who did it?  What if it was a renegade element of the Syrian Armed forces?  Is this another case of cherry-picked "evidence" as we saw in Iraq?  Can we trust the government to properly evaluate the intelligence?

Why should we act in this case and not in Darfur, Congo, or dozens of other hot spots where even more people were killed by the wanton acts of a power-hungry dictator?  Doesn't acting in this case and none of the others devalue the death of the many thousands who have already died in Syria?

What is so special about chemical warfare.  Certainly the experience in WWI led to an aversion to it, and treaties to prevent its use in the future.  But the future is now, and the number of people who have been killed by chemical attack is still only a tiny fraction of those who were killed by conventional weapons.  Why the difference in how it is viewed?  Dead is dead, no matter how it happens.

I think that Obama is right in seeking political cover by putting Congress on the spot and letting the people's representatives go on record.  Look what happened in the UK.  Their parliament said "no-way".