Credit: Official U.S. Navy Imagery / Foter / CC BYI wrote
earlier today about how the limited strikes on Syria that Obama
is
reportedly likely to order in the
next few days will not stop the Assad regime from committing
atrocities in Syria.

Writing in The New York Times’ “Room for Debate”
section
Micah Zenko, a fellow in the Center for Preventive Action at
the Council on Foreign Relations, points out that limited strikes
will lead to increased American involvement in the region because
limited strikes will be perceived, by both the Syrian government
and its opponents, as an assault not only the Assad regime’s
ability to conduct chemical weapon attacks, but on the regime
itself. This, Zenko argues, could lead to the U.S. being dragged
into a campaign aimed at removing Assad from power. 

From
The New York Times:

Based on early reporting, it appears that the only objective of
the potential use of force would be to prevent the further use of
chemical weapons by the Assad regime.

Therefore, the practical impact of the intervention would not be
to protect civilians on the ground from state-directed violence,
but to deter Assad from using one type of indiscriminate lethality,
chemical weapons. If Obama decides that achieving this outcome is
in the U.S. national interests – both in terms of Syria and any
deterrent effect it has on the potential use of chemical weapons
users elsewhere – then he will likely authorize the reported cruise
missile and airstrikes.

However, it is highly unlikely that such an intervention can be
so narrow that it will not force a deeper U.S. military engagement
in Syria’s civil war. Many have compared the potential upcoming use
of force to the December 1998 United States and Great Britain
attack against Iraq’s suspected weapons of mass destruction and
ballistic missile capabilities. In that four-day bombing campaign,
only one-third of the targets were related to the production of
weapons of mass destruction or ballistic missile programs.
Similarly, in the case of Syria, most of what the United States
bombs would not be directly tied to Assad’s chemical weapon
production, storage or weaponization facilities. Even a limited
cruise missile strike will not be merely an attack on Assad’s
chemical weapons capabilities, but an attack on the regime
itself.

Subsequently, the United States will be correctly perceived by
all sides as intervening on behalf of the armed opposition. From
there, it is easy to conceive how the initial limited intervention
for humanitarian purposes – like Libya in 2011 – turns into a joint
campaign plan to assure that Assad is toppled.

That the U.S. could be dragged further into the conflict in
Syria with limited strikes is only one of the reasons that the U.S.
should not intervene in Syria. Reason‘s Peter
Suderman put
up a list earlier today of other reasons why American
intervention in Syria would not be a good idea.