Outside of a pretty straight-on humanitarian intervention, it’s not clear what the U.S. interest could possibly be. In Korea and Vietnam, the paradigmatic Cold War proxy battles, the idea was that we were defending Western-style democracies against insurgents backed or perhaps directed by international communists. We were also showing the Russians and the Chinese that we would pay any price, etc. to help keep people free (never mind the rotten record of the South Korean and Vietnamese governments).

In Syria, who is our proxy? Not the Assad regime, obviously. But it’s not clear we’re on the side of the rebels, either, many of whom seem to be precisely the sorts of Islamic radicals we stand against. More important, I guess, is that the international stakes in Syria are far from clear. What happens in the United States if Hezbollah or al Qaeda takes over? Are they that much closer to establishing sharia law in Oklahoma? Will they be emboldened to undertake another 9/11 (which they did when the U.S. had already beaten secularish Iraq and was playing footsie with the Taliban in Afghanistan).