Looks like the shooting's started

[CharlesHarris]

This is a horrible decision to bomb Syria. It works against our interests in the region.

Assad is a stern dictator. His dad was infamous for razing defiant towns and salting the earth. Literally. I have no doubt that the apple didn't fall far from the tree. Assad was a pain in the ass with our operations in western Iraq as he did nothing to stop Sunni foreign support from flowing into Q-west and Ramadi. That said, we could never prove he was complicit either; and we went to great lengths to seek evidence. It's just wasn't there. So, while he wasn't helpful he also wasn't opposing U.S. forces by supporting our adversaries. At worst, he was neutral. Still, he is a bad guy and I wouldn't put genocide beyond limits for him.

I don't care if Assad gassed civilians or the insurgents did it and blamed govt. wouldn't be the first time that insurgents perpetrated a horrible attack on civilians and attributed it to govt forces. Pro-Saddam insurgents and Maliki forces both did it to US when I was in Iraq. It's the Arab way.

Weakening Assad strengthens Hezbollah and by extension Iran. Hezbollah is the major Iranian proxy in Syria (and a big reason Assad didn't stop Sunni foreign support). Iran controls the south east oil region in Iraq and would like to book-end that control on the west side as a way to limit Sunni influence and box in the Kurds. So harming Assad actually works agains US interests by helping Iran.

Icing on the cake is that people are crowing about the great deal Boeing made to sell airliners to Iran. The optics of these two events are awful in light of the Obama deal in nuclear sanctions with Iran.

Conclusion. The administration is either deliberately supporting Iran or senior leaders are misled by Obama holdovers in our civil service. Either way, the current administration look like amateurs and will be punished politically and maybe dragged into a needless war.

Opinion. This is classic HR McMaster. He acts from a desire to be a heroic leader. He rarely thinks through the implications and downstream consequences of actions. Very tactical; not strategic at all. He plays checkers very well, but couldn't describe chess (metaphorically speaking). I'm not saying he's a bad man because he isn't. He's just not a good strategic thinker or leader; a consequence of his tactical excellence and training as a tactical historian. He just doesn't have good instincts for secondary effects.

Iran is the real threat. Not ISIS, Iran. It's playing out in real time.

ISIS is a threat, but not existential in the way Iran is. ISIS will kill westerners in small groups and subvert our culture.

Iran has a proud history of destroying western nations and seeks to revive that glory by eradicating the west; as a nation they will soon have the ability to do so in more than one way. Nuclear blackmail is obvious. Less obvious is choking off energy flows to bankrupt the west, coupled with subversion in the UN and national politics of the west. There is much more detail for both, with many branch plans available to them.