When the ghost haunting my machine ate up my post on Obama’s Syrian policies, I didn’t intentionally try to compensate my frustration with sheer tonnage of words. But it is a long one.

It’s a complicated war, very different from Iraq in 2003 & Libya in 2011, & now because of ISIS & US intervention has become partially integrated with the war in Iraq–though it is still a distinct war between dictatorship & popular revolution. It’s a hell of a mess & it is intentionally confusing in order to divide antiwar forces & minimize opposition.

People don’t have to know where these countries are on a map; they don’t have to know the culture or cuisine & don’t have to have traveled there or speak the language to oppose the bombing of civilians by any military for any reason.

It is never going to happen that bombers & special forces are the agents of human emancipation from dictatorship. That is absolutely excluded. If you find yourself cheering for the slaughter in east Aleppo you should hang your head in shame.