National Review continues to support war with Syria. Jim Manzi dissents:
[F]orcing Assad from power represents a far larger and more uncertain undertaking than has been publicly discussed.
This is the course of action advocated by the editors: “a broader, longer-term plan to topple Assad and defeat his allies.” Those are smooth words for a rough job. How would we accomplish this? How many people would we kill, and how much public money would we spend? Why do we believe that the rebels would form a government that would not be worse for us? How would Iran attempt to counter such an intervention, since they have an extremely strong interest in the outcome? And so on. The litany of costs and dangers ought to be familiar to anybody after Iraq and Afghanistan. Would you voluntarily take on one-tenth the cost in deaths and money of either of those wars to replace Assad with whatever is likely to follow him? Wandering into that kind of a commitment based on what has been presented to the American people so far would be extremely rash.
(Photo: A protester holds up her hand, which is covered in red paint, as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry testifies during a hearing on “Syria: Weighing the Obama Administration’s Response” before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on September 4, 2013. By Alex Wong/Getty Images)
The Dish 