As far as I can tell (news reports are sometimes contradictory), we had a program of arming moderate rebels which put a bunch of weapons there and then we discovered that our rebel fighting force wasn't too "moderate" (whatever that means) and wasn't that interesting in fighting for "us." Then we had the Saudis arm rebels and that didn't work too well. Then we tried to cut some sort of deal with Russia and Assad and that didn't turn out too well. We're notionally supporting some "rebels" (yay Star Wars!) against Assad and Assad against some rebels. And now there are a bunch of good liberals making holocaust comparisons (I don't want to downplay what's going on there, but there is a lot of propaganda which makes it harder to really know what's going on there). You know, the usual "never again" stuff.
Just what is it "we" are supposed to be doing? I never understand that part. I mean, I figure taking in tons of refugees would be something "we" could do which wouldn't involve adding gasoline to a fire, and wouldn't be as expensive as all that gasoline, but that is unpossible. The right wing Trumpkins went after Chobani for daring to hire some of the tiny number of (non-Syrian) refugees we have taken in. Muslim refugees are basically evil personified with superpowers according to the Right, so that's not going to happen.
If our country isn't willing to help people, then it's reasonable to conclude that we aren't willing to help people. Anything we do/should have done will not be humanitarian, because there is no support for humanitarian aid for Muslims. There's support for blowing people up, but that doesn't seem to help much for some reason.
I figured the "humanitarian intervention left" would have learned a few things from Iraq, but no. There still isn't a Muslim country that they aren't willing to send freedom bombs to in the name of freedom.
We don't even have to go back to Iraq. Anyone remember Libya? There are people I still won't "talk to" because of that. Not because they disagreed with me, but because they were "good liberals" who gave me the condescending smarmy "this time it will be different" and "why don't you want to help the poor people of Libya?" bullshit. We sure did help them. Yes that was mostly a David Cameron joint, but we were along for the ride. Heckuva job. Next time we'll get it right. Our military has a lot of experience with this stuff now.
