Some random thoughts about John McCain's trip to Syria.
For someone who suffered unspeakable torture and torment as a POW in the Vietnam War, one would think that McCain, of all people, would be reluctant to send people to war without a desperately good reason, such as self-defense and protection of vital interests (vis-vis the life and well being of all or most Americans).
Instead, he seems determined to push the U. S. into every dirty little war he can find. Something is amiss. Perhaps he is senile. Perhaps he harbors such a deep resentment over his fate that he wishes ill on everyone else and wants others to suffer as he did.
Whatever his motivation, his behavior is bizarre. News reports suggest that the people he was photographed with are thugs, who kidnapped, and continue to hold,non-combatant hostages. He also fails to account for the complexity and confusion of what is, in reality, a sectarian civil war. As bad as Bashir alAssad and his gang are, the opposition forces are not exactly heros. Sect, region and ethnicity are primary divisions, not easily healed over once the blood flows. Honor, revenge, and group loyaly (family, clan, tribe, ethnicity, sect) are more prominent than concepts such as democracy, freedom, liberty, rights, etc. as they are understood in the U. S. Different cultures are different worlds (as worldviews) and not easily understood by outsiders.
We should have learned from Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan (both in our involvement in the war against the Soviet Union and our own war against the Taliban) that force of arms cannot be used to impose our values on other people. Further, we should also have learned that the most powerful law in operation is the Law of Unintended Consequences.
We cannot control the world, nor should we want to. Sometimes intervention is just as bad, or worse, that non-intervention. American bombing and killing Syrians is just as bad, or worse, that Syrians killing Syrians. The dead, in either case, are just as dead. Ending the war would be noble. getting into the thick of it would not.
Sadly, this one may have to be played out with the outside world working from the sidelines to try to influence the direction the war takes. The hope would be to help construct something better when it is over. Right now, the muliple sides are acting, to some extent, as proxies for outside interests, but the U. S. does not seem to have anyone available to serve that role.
What do we hope to gain, anyway?