On Whether the US Should Intervene in Syria

It is a very sad day when the best piece on this was written by a humor site, the Onion.  That piece is sarcasm of a very dark kind and says nothing much about the human suffering.  But trying to decide on the basis of human suffering is equally impossible, unless one has the ability to predict the  total future casualties (as well as their split into innocent bystanders and willing participants) under each option.

I'm not well informed about the situation in Syria but it seems to me that none of the sides in the civil war are on the side of ordinary democracy for the majority of Syrian people.  It looks like a religious-cum-political-cum-economic power struggle between fairly small groups.

What's truly awful about these situations that the "innocent bystanders" are always the least powerful and often the ones the next power-brokers will oppress.