Syria War Council: Is intervention wise?
**Reader’s Note: These are Major Matt Cavanaugh’s remarks from the 6 September 2013 War Council event on intervention in Syria. The full event remarks are available at Small Wars Journal. His prompt was to answer whether intervention in Syria was “wise.”**
My task: What is the utility of American force in Syria – is any sort of intervention wise? To start, I don’t like the word “wise” – the battlefield punishes intellectual vanity. You will not hear me reach definitive conclusions. I don’t specifically know what to do. But I think we can advance the ball forward a bit; that’s success for me today.
I’ll begin with Clausewitz, who wrote, “the first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesmen and commander have to make is to establish the kind of war on which they are embarking…”
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