So How Can a Blogger Who Styles Himself an Ewok Be So Smart?

Ace from Ace of Spades nails the problem of Syria here in a way that's about a hundred times smarter and more readable than any of the crap you'd read in the New York Times:

Bombing things and killing people is an act of extremely serious moral dimension. We should not even consider such things unless we are satisfied that one of the two is true: 

1) That such action is so manifestly in our own selfish interests that we can be forgiven for taking the violent action.  

2) That the action is so manifestly in the interests of general altruistic good we would scarcely forgive ourselves if we didn't take the violent action. 

And ideally I'd like a good mix of 1 and 2. 

So let's say we start bombing in Syria. 

First question: Who do we bomb? 

We could make a case either way. 

And that means we probably shouldn't do it. 

There should be no such thing as an Obligatory Bombing. A Thoughtless Bombing, a Rote Bombing. There should be no Muscle Memory Bombings, no Just To Keep Our Hand in the Game Bombings, no Well We've Got To Do Something and a Bombing is Something Bombings. 

We need a pretty damn good reason for that.

What's our reason in Syria?

People like Times writers -- I'm looking at you, David Brooks -- who look down their arch noses at bloggers, don't read good bloggers like Ace, Allahpundit, the boys at Powerline, Gateway Pundit, Instapundit, or any of the other actual working writers and journalists that populate the blogosphere.   If they did, they'd know where the action is.