When it comes to the question of intervening against Bashar al-Assad, it’s simply the case that Syria pretty much is Iraq for the Obama administration. The particularism that the administration claims to apply everywhere falls away, glossing over the distinctions between the two situations: among other things, that there is a viable opposition in Syria pleading for U.S. assistance in deposing its brutal dictator; that Al Qaeda-affiliated extremists were not in Iraq in 2003, but are ascendant in Syria now; that even the most hawkish U.S. advocates of intervention have never suggested anything close to the invasion of Iraq, with its Shock and Awe bombardment and 467,000 deployed U.S. military personnel.
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