Yeah, okay. Let's see you say that six years into a civil war in your country, against the government you support. But William T Sherman was an American hero, right? It was military necessity that ordinary people lost their homes and farms on the off chance some of the food they grew might have found its way to an army hundreds of miles away.

I'm not saying that Assad is good or right, or that the world wouldn't be a better place without him in charge of Syria. But the world would also unquestionably have been a better place without Obama in charge of the USA. We speak in admiration of the power of the press but shriek with outrage over a foreign leader assassinating a journalist, while Obama assassinated primitive bandits with drones. Assad has little reach beyond Syria's borders, but Obama's reach was global. So flip it around and how can you deny any other nation the right to attack America? By approving the attack on Syria, you also give your blessing to Pearl Harbor. We were actively engaged in economic warfare against the Japanese, and had forced their ally, the UK, to break their alliance, and were waging an undeclared naval war against her major ally.

Intervening in other nations' affairs sounds good and virtuous, but what if a hyperpower had existed 100 years ago? What would they have thought about the US's treatment of blacks? What might they have done to intervene in response to segregation? What might another nation have done in response to rioters in the sixties, presuming that they had justified grievances and the government was suppressing them by force?

Irish people were a major part of the US population, and had strong influences on our culture. There were millions of Irish people with relatives back home, and yet, we did nothing in response to the atrocities perpetuated by the British government before Ireland won independence. We have not even the ties or connections to any Middle Eastern nation that we had to Ireland, and Mexican drug cartels are a greater threat to Americans than any insurgent group in the Levant. Furthermore, Iraq and Afghanistan should have amply demonstrated the sorts of underlying dynamics and group tensions within these countries about which we know nothing. Assad is fighting ISIS for crap's sake! It's one thing to sit a whole ocean away and condemn the tactics and weapons used, but there is a very real possibility of his regime falling, and radical Islam getting yet another state under their control. For 100 years we have come to the aid of various groups or countries hard-pressed in the wars they started, and received little in return, from the English repudiation of the war debts from "the Great War" which was supposed to make the world safe for democracy, all the way up to the various thugs or enemies who obtained their current seats of power with our blessing or assistance.

We have no dog in this fight. Let Israel remove Assad and take the blame from the Muslim world. He's in their neck of the woods, after all. What does it matter to us, what he does to a bunch of jihadis, or what they do to him? How does throwing more death and destruction into the mix make the world a better or safer place, and how is it more moral or virtuous?