In reply to andrewmcleod:
> Those who argue that we should not get involved have forgotten, or do not know, that we are already involved and at least partly responsible.
At best a half truth, and in any case irrelevant.
Every border in the Fertile Crescent is the result of war, there were vicious wars of extermination and dispossession there long before we had anything to do with the place and will probably be far into the future. Indeed it is hard to think of any international border that was
not the result of a war, even if that war is now long in the past.
When "WE" were calling the shots, we had an empire on which the sun never set. That empire is long gone, while the American empire is fading fast. It is likely that the Chinese empire that may replace the Americans as the dominant world power will cause all the current knee-jerk anti-Americans to remember American dominance longingly as a time of freedom and open-ness.
> So it is a bit late to argue that we shouldn't get involved...
On the contrary, it is very easy to argue that the world has changed, changed utterly, and our imperial past is as relevant to the appropriate current action as last year's snow. Those who do not remember the past may be compelled to repeat it, but those who are obsessed with it are trapped in it. Playing the "imperial guilt" card has no bearing on the current situation, not least because it is only the self-loathing, Britain-hating pseudo-intellectuals who feel it. Yesterday has indeed gone, for better or worse. The most involved Empire in the region was in any case the Ottoman Empire, do you seriously suggest that they should become a bigger player again? They are fomenting enough trouble on the fringes as it is.
Even when we had an empire, it was brought down by imperial overstretch - even possessing a vast empire we could not control events, what chance do we have now? The imperial resources that we had then are long gone, we do not have the capability to resolve this crisis, if it is even resolvable. We cannot solve Syria (or Egypt, or any other place in turmoil), we can only embroil ourselves.
Best to stay out, perhaps helping slightly at the margins.