John Kerry

What interests me is what is going to happen? Are we really going to war (even in a very limited sense) because our president declared something is a red line?

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2013/08/punishing-few-based-on-unknown-to.html

Intervention in this situation is somewhat perplexing. After watching tens of thousands of Syrians die in a brutal civil war, the United States seems determined to use bombs on a rogue faction of an oppressive regime based on murky intelligence in order not to alter the course of the civil war, but to defend the narrow principle that it's OK to kill people with bombs but not with poisonous gas. That doesn't sound like a great idea.

Either it's worth taking a side in the Syrian civil war, or it isn't. Either it's worth the blood and treasure to end the conflict and hold the war criminals to account, or it isn't. Bombing a country to prove a point about observing internationally sanctioned methods of killing seems unjustifiable. If the United States is less intent on saving lives in Syria than on proving to the United Nations how much we care about observing international war crimes law, we would do better to begin by delivering Dick Cheney to the Hague, instead.

If you feel like it, and this is very OT, I would be interested in your views in what Coates wrote about Obama's speech yesterday: http://www.theatlantic.com/ta-nehisi-coates/