Syria

I'm not going to pretend to be a foreign policy expert, but the people who do pretend to be experts are getting us into quite a mess in Syria. It is a bad idea to get involved in a civil war, even when one faction is led by a hated tyrant. Consider our own past experiences. US involvement in the Russian Civil War led to Soviet mistrust and resentment that lasted through the interwar period, World War II, and the Cold War. And now we are butting heads with Russia once again. So here is what I would do if I were President Obama: pull out and let Putin stick his hand in the meat grinder. Consider that the term "moderate rebel" is a oxrymoron, and any innocent people who might be worth helping are fleeing the country anyway. And while we are on the subject, all those military-age men flooding into Europe? I was a military-age man once, and I never got any where near the recruiting center. My guess is that the majority of these guys are like me in that they really, really, don't want to be in the military and don't want to be in combat. These guys are more draft-dodgers than terrorists. If we want to reduce ISIS and Assad's ability to carry out future attacks, then this is the type of behavior that we should encourage.