Bombing Syria would be a grave mistake

‘The whole of the Balkans,’ Otto von Bismarck said, ‘is not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier.’ He was right, until he was wrong. Times changed, and so did the map. In 1914, with Bismarck gone and no one to restrain the Kaiser, terrorism in the Balkans sparked a world war.

How much of Iraq was worth the bones of the thousands of Americans who died in Iraq? Only in the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq did the United States turn an enemy state into an ally. How much of Syria is worth the bones of a single US Marine? None of it, because time and the map have changed. The spark of terrorism in Eastern Ghouta, the grandstanding of Western leaders, and the lobbing of missiles at Syria as a moral gesture, will not undo the victory of Assad, Iran and Russia in Syria. They might, however, draw us into a regional war on the worst of terms and at the worst of times. 

The United States, and Britain and France too, must accept that they missed their chance in August 2013, after Assad’s planes dropped chemical weapons on the eastern suburbs of Damascus.