Has the Syrian government under Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons? We study the evidence while experts tell us, no matter the use or not, that the Syrian problem has no good solutions.

Terrible crimes against even children cry out to us, but we fear a Vietnam/Iraq outcome. On the other hand, if we don’t help at all or only minimally, we fear that Syria will become an al-Qaeda bastion with chemical weapons.

Recent history is not optimistic. Iraq and Afghanistan, despite the blood and treasure we spent in those countries, are not our bosom buddies. Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya overthrew despotic, corrupt regimes but are at risk of replacing them with narrow Islamist ones.

Secular regimes have a bad reputation in the Middle East because most of them were/are despotic and corrupt. Islamist regimes may yield to the same temptations (witness Egypt), but when given a chance to vote in free elections, citizens seem willing to give them a try in a backlash against the secular ones.

We supported some of those secular regimes. Our decisions in helping Syrians begins with the sober assessment that our influence is limited by our past actions. Some reaping of what we have sown is inevitable.

Perhaps the best we can hope for is an Islamist regime that recognizes basic human rights. We can certainly increase our aid to the daily increasing number of refugees in Turkey and Jordan. From now on, better that we base foreign policy decisions on the common good rather than narrow, selfish goals that come back to haunt us.