Why can’t we be honest about Syria?

Wouldn’t it be nice just once in a while to have a war in the -Middle East that wasn’t predicated on outright duplicitous nonsense? Just occasionally? There are, after all, any number of sincere reasons one could advance for intervention now in Syria. (If one thought that was a good idea, which as it happens one doesn’t.)

One could say, for example, that Bashar Assad is a nasty murderous bastard, and that now he’s gained the upper hand he’s almost certain to indulge in some even nastier, more murderous murdering than he’s been enjoying hitherto. Pretty good, that. Pretty hard to argue against. Or one could argue that a Sunni-controlled Syria would radically reshape the whole region, choking Hezbollah, isolating Iran and generally making the world better, and that without western help, it looks unlikely to happen. Bit naive, but still at least it would be sincere.

One could point to contagious instability in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.