David Cameron loses #Syria vote in House of Commons. @BarackObama ready to go it alone. #Antiwar

The Independent has the story:

The prospects of British involvement in military action in Syria receded dramatically tonight when David Cameron suffered a humiliating Commons defeat on the issue.

Even though the Prime Minister conceded a second final vote before British forces took part in military strikes, a rebellion by Conservatives and strong opposition by Labour saw a government motion defeated by 285 votes to 272. The defeat was a huge surprise and leaves Mr Cameron's strategy in disarray. He now looks unable to deliver British support to American-led strikes he wants to give.

Cameron lost the vote for many reasons; one of the biggest, no doubt, is that war with Syria doesn't poll well in Britain (2).

Such a war doesn't poll much better with Americans:

The Reuters/Ipsos poll, taken August 19-23, found that 25 percent of Americans would support U.S. intervention if Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces used chemicals to attack civilians, while 46 percent would oppose it. That represented a decline in backing for U.S. action since August 13, when Reuters/Ipsos tracking polls found that 30.2 percent of Americans supported intervention in Syria if chemicals had been used, while 41.6 percent did not.

So, to sum it up:

• War with Syria is unpopular in the United States


• War with Syria is unpopular in our biggest ally, the United Kingdom


• The government of the United Kingdom lost two votes on going to war, which makes it unlikely that they'll be able to do anything to help us even if Cameron wanted to ignore his own people.


• Russia sent warships to support the Syrian government. (Oh, did I forget to mention that? Well, they did. Which means that war with Syria is likely to become, at best, a proxy war with Russia pretty quickly.)

Despite all this, President Obama is set to go it alone in Syria.

His hubris is quickly catching up to that of his predecessor.

In which Donald Rumsfeld .. wait for it ... is right. #Syria #Antiwar

You're not gonna fucking believe what Donald Rumsfeld actually said.

“One thing that is very interesting, it seems to me, is that there really hasn’t been any indication from the administration as to what our national interest is with respect to this particular situation,” Rumsfeld said in an interview with Fox News’s Neil Cavuto.

Got that? Rumsfeld says that President Obama hasn't made the case for war with Syria.

Rumsfeld.

You know, the Rumsfeld that helped the previous administration lie, lie, lie, lie, lie their way into an unnecessary and expensive boondoggle of a war.

Take a minute to reel from the shock.

Done? Good. Now then...the thing is, he's right. The Obama administration hasn't argued for why a war with Syria is in our national interest. The case for war so far has been humanitarian, and frankly, the war-weary American public just isn't inclined to give a shit right now. Nor should they be. The role of world police is overblown, and in any case, it only really served as a fig leaf for when the United States waged wars (or staged coups) that were strictly in their national interest.