Kerry op-ed on Syria (what else?) [View all]

http://blogs.state.gov/stories/2013/09/06/yes-vote-conscience-worlds-red-line

The link is to the state department blog, but they tweeted it as an op-ed so I assume it also appears somewhere else.

Here are the first two paragraphs:

I'm sometimes asked how, as someone who testified 42 years ago against the Vietnam War in which I had fought, I could testify in favor of action to hold the Assad regime accountable today. The answer is, I spoke my conscience in 1971 and I'm speaking my conscience now in 2013. Secretary Hagel and I support limited military action against Syrian regime targets not because we've forgotten the lessons and horrors of war -- but because we remember them. Make no mistake: If another Vietnam or another Iraq were on the table in the Situation Room, I wouldn't be sitting at the witness table before Congress advocating for action.

I spent two years of my life working to stop the war in Vietnam, and made enemies and lost friends because of my decision to speak my mind. So I don't come to my view on the use of military force anywhere without real reflection. I do so with an eye towards facts and reason. I am informed by Vietnam, not imprisoned by it. And I am informed by Iraq, not imprisoned by it, either. The faulty intelligence of the Iraq War was a legacy burned into all of us who present the case for action in Syria to the Congress: It has made us press with extra urgency to know that we are highly confident of what we speak now. For me and for Chuck Hagel, who voted once before on an intelligence case that turned out not to be true -- and regretted it deeply -- we would never put any Member of Congress in that same position today, period. I understand the temptation to remember Vietnam and Iraq and reflexively paint any subsequent possible military action with the same brush. But to do so ignores what Syria is, and what it isn't. There will be no boots on the ground in Syria. There will be no open-ended commitment. There will be no assuming responsibility for another country's civil war. These and other differences with Iraq are the exact reasons why many members of Congress who opposed that war and voted against it are supporting this action against Syria today.

- See more at: http://blogs.state.gov/stories/2013/09/06/yes-vote-conscience-worlds-red-line#sthash.2jPvNyb4.dpuf

I have not been around recently, did not read (yet) what others have said about all this. For myself, I am painfully confused... both mind & guts scream NO, and OTOH I do trust all three principals, Obama, Kerry and Hagel. I know they are not infallible, but I also know that they have way more information, not to mention experience, intelligence, etc., etc., than I do.