I voted no.

Let’s assume that Assad launched the attacks and it isn’t one faction of rebels fragging another faction. Even then, I don’t see where our percentage is in inserting ourselves in another ethnic civil war in the Middle East.

It isn’t a war for democracy (ah ha ha ha): there is no significant liberal faction here, and certainly not one large enough to beat both the regime and the other opposition factions. Even if they did (doubtless with our help), the faction couldn’t hope to rule Syria. The choices appear to be the Iranian-aligned regime or the Saudi-aligned opposition. The rise of either of these sides means nothing except ethnic cleansing of the other side.

This isn’t a war for national self-determination: I might support an intervention if there were some plan for a peacekeeping/peacemaking force to separate the sides until some sort of negotiated (probably ethnic) split could be effected, but there is nothing like that on the table.

There does not appear to be any sort of long-term planning: I’ve heard nothing about what our intervention looks like, no mention of what Syria looks like after the civil war is over, no mention of how we avoid Syria Nouveau turning into Afghanistan-West with a Syrian Taliban (opulently funded by Saudi and Emirati paymasters) raining nerve gas on Israel rather than Hezbollah lobbing missiles from Lebanon.

Historical antecedents are a poor map for future action: this is not Libya ‘12 (where the opposition was reasonably unified and well-organized), this is not Munich ‘38 (where there was state-level aggression masterminded by a megalomaniac: Assad may be many things but he is not Hitler), this is not Bosnia ‘91 (where multiple sub-states along ethnic lines emerged against a former central government). If I had to, I’d say this is Iraq ‘02 which makes us all Cheney.

I also assume that surgical strikes are the thin edge of the wedge. Once we eliminate the chemical weapons or at least “once we eliminate some of the regime’s chemical weapons” because I doubt that we’ll be knocking out chemicals held by the rebels or that we’ll be able to eliminate all of the regime’s) there will be another thing (probably along the lines of “well, we’ve eliminated the chemical weapons but the regime’s scuds are still out there!”) and another thing (probably along the lines of “we cannot allow our brave allies in the Syrian Opposition to be defeated”) until we’re the rebel’s air force. This is all without “boots on the ground” but without boots on the ground there’s no endgame that’s even remotely better/distinguishable from anarchy.

This is lunacy.