Sure:
There is little doubt that Syria remains a moral and humanitarian disaster and tragedy. Six years of civil war, the campaign against ISIS, and the Russian and Iranian intervention have created the largest single refugee flow since the end of World War Two, half a million dead with thousands more wounded and permanently traumatized, and reconstruction costs estimated in the hundreds of billions. But it is also a country in which this administration -- like its predecessor -- has limited interests and options, and few compelling reasons for making a major commitment.
This is true. And our allies (as shaky as it is under the Erdogan trajectory) Turkey and Israel have major interest in what goes on there. That's leading from behind.
But we do have a vital interest in containing and then rolling back the mullah-run Iran's threat to the region. And a bridgehead in Assad's Syria is part of that threat.
But we do have an interest in getting ridding of Assad who has helped kill thousands of American troops by funneling jihadis into Iraq when we fought there. It should be a lesson that killing Americans leads to your eventual death or exile.
But we do have an interest in denying Russia a bridgehead in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.
But we do have an interest in punishing a state that uses chemical weapons lest that Western revulsion from the World War I carnage fail to become a more general revulsion that is part of a global standard.
I still wouldn't commit an American army to Syria, under current circumstances. But I would support Syrians and regional allies in deposing Assad and preventing him from winning his multi-war (and wish President Obama had done so rather than saying Assad had to go but assuming that "history" would take care of the Assad problem*) and emerging as a vassal of Iran and a host of Russia.
Work the problem rather than toss up our hands and say it is impossible to solve. Russia played a poor hand and is so far showing up in the win column because we refused to work against their intervention, assuming Putin was doomed. Which was as big an error as assuming Assad was doomed.
*And note that President Obama wanted to avoid a war against Assad in Syria but eventually got a war against ISIL in Syria and in Iraq that practically speaking was a war to benefit Assad (and Iran and Russia)--at least in the short run, depending on what we and others do.
UPDATE: We have no interest in going to war with Russia over Syria, so in theory this is fine:
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump may discuss a Syria settlement at an Asian economic summit in Vietnam next week, the RIA news agency reported on Saturday.
This idea seems to be coming from the Russians who don't want to have Syria suck up their resources while Russians fight and die in Ukraine.
Which indicates we should be very careful not to make Russia's Syrian adventure easy for them to afford.
I'm just hoping that Secretary of State Tillerson isn't as incompetent as Kerry was in negotiating with the Russians about Syria.
