Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
No, the easiest thing to do is deal with the government. If there are lots of groups there are lots more chances you can find some pretty good people to work with. But it would take work, imagination, insight, Arabic language skills and it would be dangerous and uncertain.

It would be the most rational choice if your unstated objective was to make your life and career progression easier. But if your actual objective was the good of the USA and you took the easy route, you would have to admit to yourself that you weren't worth much.
There are two assumptions in your argument, one is flat out wrong. First you're logic implies the U.S. not doing anything (wrong, we did things, so you obviously meant not enough) is why Syria ended up the way it is. Syria ended the way it is due to a host of local and regional factors that had nothing to do with the U.S.. When you embrace American Hubris views, then of course you view the world as though we're the center of all, and we are the cause and effect of all, but that has little to do with reality.

The other assumption is if we intervened to a greater extent there would be a different outcome. That may or may not be true. If we killed Assad and greatly neutered his military it is probable his regime would have fallen, but we have no clue what would have happened after that, but we sure as heck would own the problem at that point, and to what end?

But if your actual objective was the good of the USA and you took the easy route, you would have to admit to yourself that you weren't worth much.
This argument assumes that getting the U.S. involved in a regional quagmire would somehow be in our interest? Why isn't it in our interest to see both of our adversaries (Sunni extremists and Iran and their proxies) fight one another, and for once strain their economies instead of ours? Why can't we wait until there is an opportunity to actually achieve something that is in our interests? Removing Malaki would be one example, the situation was managed to great effect in that aspect, but who knows what the new government will do.

Since I'm not sure of the extent of support we're providing and to whom, I can't make an argument on whether we need to increase it our not, but I haven't see a good argument yet on why we should intervene, or should have, intervened, militarily in Syria. Everyone is making a lot of wild guesses made on sensational news reporting instead of facts, because the facts are not available the public.

We had our so called expert on Syria, and his/her expertise was due to tweeting back and forth to "one" person he/she knew in Syria. The first casualty of any conflict is the truth, but I would hope most people who visit SWJ have enough experience to realize that and try to look beyond the headlines.

In the end those clamoring for U.S. military involvement should provide a theory of change and identify a condition that we can feasibly obtain. None provided to date other than criticism for the U.S. policy wonks, and trust me I like to criticize them as much as any body else, but at the end of the day if we can't provide a sound strategy that is our interest, not one that merely satisfies our emotional craving to do something, then recognize the complaints for they really are, just background noise from frustrated people.