Had this discussion with a right-leaning friend.
Me: Anyone think the Obama's wanting to take action may be a bluff? I'm suddenly reminded of Star Wars.
Friend: It clearly is a bluff, Obama doesn't have the balls to just go and do it. He also tried to force this, and because of that, set us up for a lose-lose situation. If it were Bush, Clinton, etc, we'd have been in there and raised all hell.
However now, it gets more complex, mainly cause we have like, only France in support. Obama's threat to go to war, to invade, and to remove the weapons are seemingly more and more intangible. Now here is Syria thinking "Hey, these guys aren't going to war, they're just blowing smoke". Every one of these hesitations make oppressors more confident, Hitler's aggressive before WW2 ringing a bell?
It's now a double edged sword. Go to war: be labeled as a war monger (much like how Obama portrayed Bush), lose lives, raise taxes, increase spending, continue to confuse Middle East relations. Don't go to war: Be labeled as an indecisive leader, show a weak resolve, promote future aggresion through appeasement.
So here we are, with a UN that is about as useful as a water-gun (Gee, thanks everyone!), Putin preventing war (Or at least stalling for Syria) to serve his own initiative, and Obama posing like some tough-guy president.
The only winners are the oppressors now. Syria, North Korea, etc. are starting to get used to these idle threats. I mean seriously, now we're getting news that NK is restarting their plutonium nuclear factory for bombs already.
Funny how this is eerily reminiscent of the prelude to WW2. League of Nations, USSR, economical turmoil seem to be checked. All that we're missing is something like pre-WW2 Japan and Germany.
Yippee
Huh, this probably the first time I've read a conservative argument that had actual points of merit to it in well over a year. Although I'm not quite sure Obama wouldn't do it if it were more politically convenient. If more Americans supported intervention, I have no doubt that Obama would go ahead with the bombing. But with 61% of the country opposed to intervention, it would be very bad politically for Obama to circumvent Congress and bomb Syria. It would be Unconstitutional as well, but our political leaders don't care much about the Constitution except during election years. And even then, they care only about the parts of it that they agree with.