A couple points -
1. At the moment we are not well positioned to intervene except by air strikes. Most of our troops are gone from Iraq and they would not be welcomed back. Much of our ground force is tied up in Afghanistan.
2. The rebels would not welcome overt support from us or Israel. They do not want to appear as puppets of the Great Satan.
3. We have a vested interest in keeping this civil war going. Assad's #1 supporter is Iran. He gets financial, military and political assistance from them. Bleed Assad and you bleed Iran.
4. If Assad has chemical weapons why has he not already used them? He can't use them in a major population center like Aleppo, but Homs would seem like a likely place to use chemicals.
5. It was never clear what Israel was doing when they bombed Syria a few years ago. How much of Assad's WMD stockpile has already been wiped out by overt or covert action?
6. Syria doesn't have much oil. Why should we care?

St S... If I read you right, you are saying there is no reason to intervene as there is no significant oil to gain....moreover, by not intervening, Iranian money and support goes down the drain. The advantage is in doing nothing?

What was your feeling about the aside I posed...? Re: Reagan and Bush selling the fix ins for WMD to Saddam sonhe could kill Iranians?

Please, call me Swithin.
You are basically correct. Also, the fact that there is not a lot that we CAN do at the moment. I should point out I am talking about the likely reasoning of the administration, not my personal views, although they are similar. To elaborate:
1. Although chemical weapons sound scary, they aren't really an effective way to kill a lot of people. Young men with machine guns have done much worse damage than chemical weapons by several orders of magnitude.
2. If Obama is talking tough like this, then he probably has intel that NBC (nuke, bio, chem) is unlikely at this time. First rule of politics - don't say anything your opponents can stick you with later.
3. You can bet money the Israelis are all over this. They share a border and a long history with Assad. I would lay money down that they know exactly where 99% of Assad's NBC weapons are and they are keeping a close watch on them.

Swithin, I am only looking for honest answers. Yours is appreciated. A lot of folks think that only "bad guys" have and would use chem and bio weapons so when we talk tough to guys like Assad, it comes with some sort of righteous indignation. With over 3000 tons of this stuff left, down from 31500 declared tons....pointing fingers is not really our right. Even more so when so many Iranian civilians and Kurds died from American chemicals compliments of Saddam.

It's funny how we get ourselves involved in things that we shouldn't be involved in. Syria is a problem that has been there since when the British and French divided up the region at the end of WW I. Syria is like all the other nations in the region that was created by imperial powers.

Craig, I am with you, reluctantly accepting a defensive military, as the likelihood of no military...Costa Rica style...is not going to happen here. Of course we had to "defend" ourselves from Saddam (after co producing him) and we have to defend our access to foreign oil....and now...to defend ourselves from terrorists world-wide...meaning we can justify taking war anywhere and have no qualms about undeclared wars...Pakistan, Yemen, Somali...nor with the old proxy wars. You said...American soil. But the mentality in operation has long been Empire.

Craig....boats in Yemen and drone attacks....right. I agree...let's get our people home.

And the Banksters keep funding both sides like they ALWAYS have .... Give a man a gun he can rob a bank .. Give a man a bank he can ROB a country

Michael....agreed. But this is Empire. As the sun never set on the English flag, we have become the worlds largest empire of all time.unlike the British, we figured out we didn't need to colonize the countries, just control them economically.if that doesn't work, we can overthrow their governments. The economic warfare comes first. But then....with military at readiness all over the globe...that card can be played or the threat played.

"So he flattened Saddam with his banner unfurled
Won the Battle of Baghdad, but lost the rest of the world!"
-- from the song "Lord of the Realm" on the Local News CD by Embedded Reporter

Nice lyrics.... And is this just linear thinking? Are we just reactionaries? Where is the foresight, vision, let alone wisdom? I think GB Senior didn't chase Saddam down specifically because he didn't want to have to occupy a country until it could run itself again following a war. Of course he had a few more cards in his deck that Dub.... But that's what must mystifies me about much public pro war sentiment... Never questioning consequences....cause and effect...that sort of thing. We CAN lose the rest of the world or at least beat it down to massive economic and physical devastation, police states, huge refugee crisis, bread lines and what not. But why?

@Brian
I don't know if you have seen this article; however, it fits very well with your blog.
http://theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=9733

Here is where I struggle with heavy criticism of past foreign policy decisions. How do we know the world would be a better place if the US had not intervened? Most likely, Saddam would have killed Kurds with or without our wmd's. Also, many of the decisions we made were based on the chess match we played with the USSR. What does a world look like where USSR gains control of Middle East oil fields as we step back and watch? Would post 9/11have been different if a Democratic President had been in the White House, maybe, but probably not. The American people, not the government alone, wanted a country to blame. Saddam fit the role.

Lastly, should we not also hold responsible those presidents that sat back and did nothing. Clinton never addressed the growing threat of terrorism even after numerous attacks on American interests. That lack of foreign leadership could be pointed as the reason the 9/11 attackers were able to pull off what they did.

No president is immune to foreign policy failures. Most are left to deal with the previous administrations F-ups. It is a snowball effect that could go back 100 years to our failure after WWI that created the conditions for WWII.

"The world no longer listens to Washington elites. Now it's our turn to do the same."

JB...excellent article. Dwight Eisenhower was very concerned with the rise of the military industrial complex....found it alarming and warned us against it's unchecked growth. But who listens to five star generals when they contradict popular opinion?

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades."

Dwight Eisenhower full text at:
http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html

I hope people here read both your link and this statement (full) by Eisenhower.
Enlightening.

Back to my intro...few of you responded to the Reagan Bush sale of chemical weapons materials and technology to Saddam. I don't care who it was.... But finger pointing at madmen with chemical weapons after we have supplied madmen with the same abilities we now draw lines on.... suggests duplicity, or simply a kind of global gangsterism. The difference is OURS were actually used on civilians...so far, apparently...Assad's have not.

Delete
Brian Carlson
6:54 am on Thursday, August 30, 2012
AWD...shelling neighborhoods where suspected dissenters live doesn't happen here too often. Killing over ten thousand Americans in the name of State Security would be called state terrorism or a Dirty War. Your comment expresses ignorance
perfectly.
While our government has killed or jailed dissenters.... and while, of course, we began this free countrywith genocide and slavery, situations where the government determined groups of humans had no rights, civil or God given, were eventually contested and outlawed.
You will like the legislation the President recently signed into law, reducing our rights further ( check my blog on dissenters). But until he begins to wield it broadly, dissenters like the "occupy types" and angry right wing extremists have the opportunity you just exercised...to protest against government policies.

If you want to hunt for parasites you should look at the grotesque war profits of multinationals that feed off the wars that kill little people ..over 200 million last century. That is literal blood sucking.