RED LINE IN SYRIA

Both Republicans and Democrats seem to think that Obama should have followed through on bombing Assad's center because of the red line drawn if Assad used poison gas.  This surprises me.  I can understand if people thought Obama didn't get enough for calling off the bombing, that is that Assad's willingness to give up his poison gas store for not bombing was not enough.  But I have never heard of this argument being used.

We seem to agree that dying or being injured from poison gas is worse than being blown apart or injured by explosives.  So it sounds like the deal reached was pretty good.

I suspect that most people believe that Assad would have been killed or his regime would be fatally injured by the bombing; however, I know of no case where a dictator has been killed by an air attack: not Saddam, not Qaddafi or, for that matter, not Hitler or Mussolini either.

Yes, in bombing we could have destroyed a lot of buildings and killed a lot of people, mostly non-combatants, but almost certainly we would not have killed Assam or stopped the poison gas attacks.  In fact, I suspect they would have increased.

SOME MYTHS HELD BY CONSERVATIVES

Perhaps the biggest myth held by conservatives is that denigrating  Muhammad was not the trigger for the diplomatic outpost attack in Benghazi even though there were demonstrations throughout Islamic nations.  We have had two 9/11s since Benghazi that appear to have been peaceful.  Where are the embassy attacks since Benghazi?  Besides, the sainted President Reagan had two embassy attacks, both worse than Benghazi and also had the Marine Barracks disaster to boot; yet conservatives forgive him for these.

Another myth is that if we had left 10,000 or 15,000 troops in Iraq everything would be fine there.  They are apparently unaware that President Bush did exactly that in Afghanistan when he pivoted to war in Iraq.  The Taliban had been pushed into Pakistan where they regrouped and came back stronger than ever.  Only a brutal dictator can keep Iraq together.

Then there is the Red Line in Syria over poison gas.  When Obama drew the Red Line in Syria if Assad didn't comply he would bomb Assad's retreat.  Assad offered to give up his poisons weapons in exchange for not bombing him and Obama accepted it.  If conservatives wanted to say that just getting rid of the poisonous gases was insufficient, they would have a valid point, but they feel that bombing Assad would gotten rid of him.  Though undoubtedly we could have destroyed many buildings, killing Assad was unlikely.  He undoubtedly would have been in a bunker  And if we did kill Assad, wouldn't ISIS take over?  We have the example in Libya of what happens if we aid a mob in helping take out a brutal dictator.  At best you have chaos and ISIS sympathizers seem to be taking over Libya.  President George H.W. Bush realized this when he had Saddam's troops on the run in Iraq in the Kuwait War and stopped the U.S. advance.

It could be that conservatives actually know all the above and are just using their arguments for political purposes, but I suspect many really believe these myths.