horse of george

What are the prime 'dogs that won't hunt' in the bomb Syria narrative? That gassing a thousand people is a moral outrage that needs to be addressed in a way that risks sparking a greater, much more devastating war, but killing one hundred thousand people by conventional means is apparently tolerable. That punitive actions that aren't particularly punitive can deter combatants who cannot afford to lose - hell, combatants who won't be dissuaded by punitive actions that are decidedly punitive because they know full well they have but two choices: win or die [see war on Eastern Front in WWII for example of how this works]. That US military can become the humanitarian police force of the world and that won't lead to, one, serious degradation of US forces, two, a revolt amongst those forces because of, three, increasing entanglements in hopelessly incoherent scenarios that are impossible to fight because winning is not an option [see Afghanistan, Libya, Syria]. That the violence can be contained should the 'enemy' chose to turn your 'punitive action' into an act of war - in other words, that if the enemy decides to turn it into a war, you can pretend it isn't. That threats where you tell the person you're threatening that the threats you're making are really more gestures than threats are still threats. That it makes sense to attempt UN styled interventions without actual UN backing or lacking that at least a broad non-UN coalition of the willing that has that ebulliently naive UN feel to it. Thinking that 'doing good' on your own is noble and not begging for trouble or that symbolic wars devoid of attainable goals work out well. Spending your whole life thinking and talking as if the United States of America is not a special thing but then when you become President taking actions that are absolutely dependent on one frickin' god damn thing, the participation of the United States of America.