Callous Liberals Doomed Syria

As Syria's bloody civil war has raged on, Richard Cohen at the Washington Post has been dismayed to see so many liberals fighting against intervention. "The argument is that Syria would be Iraq all over again," Cohen writes. But "this is tendentious." People like Cohen weren't out to "impose some US-friendly regime, but merely to stop the killing" with low-risk measures like imposing a no-fly zone. "Early on this was possible." Now it may be too late.

Iraq has fostered in the US a "pernicious pacifism," with every call for humanitarian intervention "sneeringly dismissed as if the rallying cry is 'on to Baghdad.'" Nor do these people seem to care about the continued atrocities in Syria—a UN report out today reported "new levels of brutality," with war crimes like rape and torture now routine. "Liberals, once characterized as bleeding hearts, seem now to have none at all." Click for Cohen's full column. (More Syria stories.)