I'll keep this relatively short.
Watch this BBC report: (A warning, it isn't pretty.)
Syria crisis: Incendiary bomb victims 'like the walking dead'
That is what the Syrian government is doing to its people. Do we stand by and say this isn't the rest of the world's problem?
Ten years ago, an administration took us into a war- a full scale war with tens of thousands of troops on the ground. It was a war that had no strategy, no exit policy, no plans for what would come after. It was based on false, and made up intelligence. It was, in the end, nothing more than the political toy and chest thumping of a handful of truly miserable humans like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush, etc. The cost in money was over a trillion dollars; the cost in lives and prestige, simply uncountable.
Ten years later, this is a very different time. More below...
Our current President wants to punish the regime of Bashir Assad by destroying much of his ability to use chemical weapons.
No one is calling for a armed invasion of troops.
No one is calling for some unending campaign of bombings.
No one is making up evidence...the videos that we've seen are obvious enough.
In 1990, when George H.W. Bush sent troops to the Middle East for what became the Gulf War, people here were afraid of another Vietnam. The Gulf War had international support, a clear policy of aims and exit. And in the end, it showed the American military power can work.
In 2003, the second Bush administration blew all that to hell with the insanity and debacle of Iraq. Now, when a US President has justification for the use of limited military action, everyone is scared of another Iraq.
The Gulf War ended the Vietnam Syndrome. Bush II, Cheney, Rumsfeld created the Iraq Syndrome.
I know A LOT of people here will disagree with me, but I can't watch something like this and say we have no responsibility to try and stop it. The vote in Parliament yesterday fell victim to the fear that Obama and Cameron are as irresponsible as Bush and Blair. And for those who say we should use diplomatic ways to stop this- are you kidding? Assad- the current one and his father- are butchers. They couldn't give a dead rat's ass about their people.
A short campaign using air resources only, like Bill Clinton did in Iraq (1998) and NATO did in Serbia (1999), is what is called for here and justified- because no citizen of the world should have to suffer like those students in that BBC news report.