How Would I Vote on Bombing Syria?

Over the holiday weekend I heard some congressmen talking about Obama's request that they pass a resolution granting him authority to punish Assad by tossing a few tomahawk cruise missiles into Syria.  It was quite interesting to hear Republicans and Democrats alike saying pretty much the same thing:

"I'm not sold yet.  I'm going to need to get a lot of questions answered before I'm willing to vote to authorize the use of force against Syria."

The words weren't the same, but the sentiment certainly matched.

The Syrian civil war has been boiling for nearly 2 years, but only now do we have the president paying attention.  The reported death toll in their civil war so far is about 120,000.  But Obama drew the "red line" in the sand, promising he would act if Assad used chemical weapons.  The chemical weapons came out almost immediately, but Obama ignored them.  So they came out again recently, and Obama was being embarrassed by his failure to follow through on his red line.

Now it seems the president wants to toss a few tomahawks into Syria so he can say he acted on his ultimatum.  But tossing a few tomahawks into the desert that destroy some empty buildings sounds like an empty effort to me.  Worse yet, what if some of the missiles destroy a bunch of civilians but fail to take out any military assets?  Whether that happens or not, we can count on Al Jazeera airing lots of pictures of mourners in the streets with their dead families they claim were killed in the American attack.

The critical question is, what American interests are at stake?  How can we insure our actions help the side in the civil war that will be friendly to Americans rather than affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, Iran, and/or Al Quaeda?

They say that the Middle East is watching closely to see what America does.  If we choose not to respond, it telegraphs a message that we won't actually do anything to the rogue regimes.  We won't stop Iran's nuclear weapons program.  We won't be serious about stopping terrorism.  Perhaps we won't even help Israel if they are attacked, even with nuclear weapons.

My thinking is that if America is really serious about stopping rogue middle eastern dictators from using WMD, we probably should mount a campaign against Assad with the simple objective of destroying the Assad regime.  Then we let the vacuum be filled by whoever is strongest, which probably means radical islamists and probably Iran.

So way back a year ago, when the Syrian rebels were supposedly not radical Islamists, maybe Obama should have funneled resources to the rebels and mounted an air campaign to destroy the Syrian military capability.  But that ship sailed a year ago.  There is no good option today.

So I agree with the people in congress who have said they need a lot more information before they would vote to support this symbolic attack.  Without any information to convince me that the attack will be the least bit meaningful, I think my vote would be "No".  Or in congress, maybe it would be "Nay".