A month ago I drew attention to Michael Walzer’s view that for President Obama to be dithering over Syria was no bad thing in the circumstances. According to a report in the Times of Israel, Michael’s thinking has evidently changed over the last few weeks:
[Walzer] said that his position on Syria gradually shifted from skepticism about US military intervention in the early days of the uprising to staunch opposition to it today.
“Now you have jihadi fighters on the one hand and Hezbollah on the other, and it really doesn’t look like there’s much to choose between… It’s almost impossible to describe a desirable outcome in this civil war, and if you don’t have a desirable outcome – you can’t intervene.”
See here for the conditions he specifies for feasible intervention in Syria now.
In view of the misunderstanding created by my last ‘dithering’ post, I had maybe better say that it can be true that non-intervention in a crisis of this sort has enormous costs even if the benefits of intervention are in doubt. One isn’t bound to think one knows what should be done.