Oh, Fuck Off. We Have Enough Problems.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

If people want to revert to isolationism, then fine. But let's not kid ourselves of the fact that there were thoroughly modern, decent and innocent people in Syria who were not religiously inspired fanatics who genuinely wanted to oust a dictator in order to build a better society who asked for the west to help.

Of course there were. But I was against intervention then, and still am now, because it is not in our national interest. As others have pointed out, when dealing with Muslims, no good American deed goes unpunished, while on the other hand we have historical examples of our assistance rebounding against us at a later date.

I appreciate your point about the people there; there are similar people in all the lands running from Egypt to Iran. But I doubt American intervention in the Middle East will ever be welcomed generally by the folks who live there.

This is why I'm a Secular Humanist, as one of our fundamental principles is to stop looking at humanity through the lens of national interest. I agree that getting involved directly with the ground war using our own troops would have been counter to our national interests, for a host of reasons (not the least of which was Russia's posturing if we started moving in troops), but I think we could easily have made a deal with Turkey to use our base at Incirlik (~100 miles from Aleppo, Syria) and the AWACS that are based there as a means of maintaining a "No-Fly Zone", as we did in Iraq to stop Hussein from using his airpower to murder people from the sky. This is particularly of note, given Assad's use of "barrel bombs" and constant airstrikes against his own people. 

I think the real reason we didn't do it, aside from Russian threats, is that Russia has provided Syria with a more-modern military than any other country we've faced. They have the Su-27 Flanker interceptor, the equal of our F-15 Eagles (but not our F-22s), and more importantly, the Russians made it clear that if we tried to intervene in Syria, they'd give them the SA-10 surface to air missile system, which is a seriously nasty SAM that would have threatened every aircraft we sent in.

Frankly, there's really not much the US could have done, short of a full commitment, even if we managed to establish the No-Fly Zone, since the main problem reported by the Syrian rebels was trying to face armor without antitank missiles, and Assad's artillery. And Russia made it clear that they would see us supplying missiles to the Syrian rebels as a Major No-No™.

Do I think we should have intervened on behalf of the Syrian secularists? Yes, and frankly I think had we taken a totally different approach from the start, we could have gotten Russia on our side (for instance, by allowing them to appoint a pro-Russian successor to Assad, as Assad's ass-kissing to the Russians is why they were defending him in the first place) in exchange for treaty obligations about protecting democracy and human rights in the transitional government. Instead, we tried the American Bully approach, which just doesn't hold the weight it once did, now that everyone has seen us straining under the weight of trying to fight Afghanistan and Iraq at the same time.