Is it our responsibility to go into the Middle East and restore peace, law and order, and stability?

It is understandable that after over ten years in Afghanistan and Iraq and the chaos that ensued after the fall of Quaddafi in Libya, President Obama did not want to go into another Middle Eastern Quagmire in Syria without Congressional Approval/Cover.

People forget that the President would have bombed Syria for attacking its own citizens with chemical weapons if Congress had given support. They did not and it appeared fortuitous that the Russians and the United States came up with a deal to get rid of the chemicals without military action. That seemed to be working until an apparent chemical attack on Syrian Civilians earlier this week which may have been partly prompted by Trump Administration officials relaying that they were okay with Bashir Assad remaining at the helm in Damascus.

Not knowing what the long term implications are, we have to give credit to President Trump for last night's attack on the Syrian airfield where planes earlier in the week had taken off to deliver death via chemical weapons. It proved that the United States stood for protecting people from the cruelest forms of attack. Whether we should have gone in when "less" horrible methods of killing were employed is another matter.

Is this intervention in Syria overdue? It is a good question. We intervened in Somalia during civil strife and we become tangled in tribal divisions to the point where Americans died and their bodies were paraded to cheering crowds in the street. We did not go into Rwanda and an attempted genocide occurred. For different reasons, we went into Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya (some would say on the cheap), and stability has not been fully restored in these areas. We have not gone into Syria (except in dealing with I.S.I.L.) and that country has remained in civil strife.

Unless the American People are committed to the long-term and are willing to invest treasure (like a Middle East Marshall Plan) and blood (American with N.A.T.O. and U.N. troops) to protect the peace, the fever of civil strife will endure until the sides are too fatigued to carry on and look for a better way. Even the best postwar plans have dark sides like what occurred after World War Two. It took a time to clean up and repair after the devastation of the war. The occupations of Germany and Japan following World War Two were not as rosy as the textbooks portray as ex Nazi's and Japanese militarists slipped through some of the cracks to enjoy roles in elite circles. Jews were still hounded in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Nazi's. Collaborators (real and imagined) were hunted down in France and Italy. The point is that building peaceful, stable societies takes time, money, and a lot of patience. We still have military units in Germany, Japan, and even South Korea following that conflict over 60 years ago.

Is it our responsibility to go into the Middle East and restore peace, law, and order, and stability? Absolutely. Innocents are dying and that there is borderline anarchy in these areas. We helped create it by going into Iraq on the cheap without any clear rebuilding plan except creating windfalls for companies like Haliburton and Blackwater. The chaos in Iraq spread westward when we left per agreements to leave and the Iraqi Government decided to strike out against the Sunni's instead of mending fences with them, helping to create I.S.I.L. which expanded across borders with the help of Sunni resentment of the Assad regime in Syria. We accidentally amplified it by not putting what we needed and "leading from behind" in Libya.  I.S.I.L. is being squeezed right now but plans need to be made for the post-war. Can these missions of mercy be done on the cheap and in six months or less? Only in the movies. If the United States commits, it would, as Colin Powell said before we went into Iraq, we have to go all in because we did break it.