I am very pleased that so many people found the William Polk piece useful. Because it was linked to on Brian Leiter's blog, it is received an unusually large number of views, and I suspect has been re-linked on other sites as well, judging from the traffic that Google reports.
I simply cannot predict the outcome of the forthcoming Congressional debate, nor is it clear that Obama will abide by that vote, should it go against him. Nevertheless, I am convinced that putting the matter to Congressional debate is a [rare] move in the right direction.
I hope no one will make the mistake of concluding from all of this that Assad's actions are in any way defensible. This is an awful situation, and even if the wisest course for the US is to do nothing, no one can be happy with how things are going to play out.
