I worry when I write about the Middle East because I have no confidence that I know what I'm talking about and probably less interest in the differences and similarities between a Shiite and an Alawite than I do in whether or not I think that Richard Foreman's latest play at New York's Public Theater was any good (it was not.)  I sometimes confuse Wahabi with the condiment for sushi.  Heck, I don't even feel bad about this -- if the sectarian issues of the Islamic world didn't intrude into my own, uninvited, I'd be fine with that.

That said, they have intruded and since we buy their oil and since the Western world, generations ago, messed up the Middle East's maps, we do have to pay some attention.  The New Yorker has generously made this article by Dexter Filkins available.  It explains why simple actions like a No Fly Zone enforced by the United States will likely not work and will only serve as the first steps of a slippery slope into deeper engagement.  It also explains how a hands off approach won't work either and could result in a Rwanda level failure.  It explains how Syria is more complicated than Libya and it also acknowledges the political reality -- that Obama gained very little at home for successfully deposing Qadafi and suffered politically the moment something went wrong (Benghazi).  Filkins also acknowledges that the American public has no appetite for getting involved in another military adventure and unlike a lot of commentators, he seems to think that U.S. public opinion counts for something.

Filkins discusses, at length, the political consequences of acting militarily when there is no immediate pressing U.S. defense rationale and it's fairly simple: while the academic and policy communities might criticize a failure to act, as they have criticized Clinton for both Bosnia (slow action) and Rwanda (inaction) this is not something that voters care much about.  Voters made clear what they cared about, which was avoiding a repeat of the Black Hawk Down scenario in Somalia, a military venture started by the lame duck George H.W. Bush as he was leaving office.

Fine, say the critics.  But we don't vote on everything and our leaders need to act on and define our national ideals.  Besides, you opened this piece with a lame joke about wahabi and wasabi, so why should you get a say? To which I answer, "because I'm paying for," both in terms of present and future taxes and in terms of the government's priorities.  Any dollar spent on a bullet in Syria can better be spent on a domestic project with direct benefits to American voters.  I want Obama's priorities at home.  I do not want him lurching into another budget crisis with the Republicans with a new war bill on top of everything else.

The foreign policy elite does not seem to care about this.  Anne Marie Slaughter, president of the New America Foundation, former state department staffer for Hillary Clinton and professor at Princeton was one of the pre-Iraq hawks from the left and is a huge proponent of the "Responsibility To Protect" concept, where the Western powers feel compelled, despite domestic political concerns, to intervene whenever it seems likely that a government has turned violent against its own people.

She recently wrote in The Washington Post that U.S. credibility is on the line in Syria, because Assad has been accused of using chemical weapons. The Filkins article seems to accept that Assad is likely responsible for doing this, on a small scale, though is acknowledges that there is doubt about whether or not chemical weapons have actually been used and, if so, which side used them.  Pro-intervention commentators like Slaughter write that Assad used chemical weapons as if it is a certain fact.  To back this up, however, they have to mischaracterize the intelligence behind the assertion.  Really, all an impartial observer can say at this point is that somebody (Assad, Assad loyalists operating as rogues, some element of the rebellion) may or may not have used chemical weapons.  We definitely don't have the facts to determine whether or not a "red line" has been crossed.

The undeniable presence of these weapons, which will fall into the hands of the victors in Syria (some of whom are Islamic extremists who will be unfriendly to the west) is a huge complicating factor in this whole mess.  The U.S. cannot secure or destroy these weapons reliably.  The U.S. can't even "arm the rebels" without risking putting sophisticated surface to air missiles in the hands of the next generation of extremists.

In the Filkins article, Slaughter is quoted that Obama's inaction would mean, "The world would see Syrian civilians rolling on the ground, foaming at the mouth, dying by the thousands while the United States stands by.”

Slaughter's grand guignol language is meant not to argue a course of action but to manipulate U.S. policy.  She is obscuring the fact that she is asking the U.S. to enter a civil war where the winning side will attempt to exterminate the losers.  The Alawites, says Filkins, which are the minority ruling party, have already tried to set up an emergency enclave where they will have access to support from Iran, Hezbollah and Russia if they are tossed out of Damascus.  The victorious rebels will not allow an Alawite state to be formed on Syrian soil.  This is a battle to the end and Slaughter wants the U.S. to get right into the middle of it.

If we follow Slaughter's advice, who will suffer for it?  The same volunteer soldiers who we have over-used and abused throughout two multi-decade wars in this region.  These soldiers are being drawn disproportionately from the segments of the American economy that have most failed to serve the people since the onset of The Great Recession.  While Slaughter traffics in elite concepts of global governance and responsibility, the real work of fulfilling her vision falls to the people with the least influence in American politics.

That Slaughter continues to enjoy credibility after Iraq is amazing.  Maybe the decision about what to do in Syria should be left to the American public.  They know what they want and the first responsibility of the U.S. government is to the will of its own people, not to the impulse to pick winners and losers in Syria.