As far as I know, Alexander the Great was the only man in hi...

As far as I know, Alexander the Great was the only man in history to have conquered all of Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Countless others have tried, and countless have failed. Whether they fell in the treacherous mountains of Afghanistan or the hot deserts of Iraq and Syria, these three countries have historically been difficult to conquer. Afghanistan, of the three has been the most difficult. Alexander had to change his entire style of warfare and marry an Afghan girl in order to win over the people.

But I digress. The point I'm making is that we are preparing to enter into another battlefield. After over a decade spent in the Middle East waging wars against a people that we don't understand, ostensibly for a people that don't understand us. When we first entered Iraq and Afghanistan we were greeted as liberators but after 10 years of civil war in each country it is hard to tell which side the people are on now. I won't go into the justification for either of those wars because they have been discussed at great length for years.

This new war (or fake war, or temporary war, or whatever you want to call it) in Syria is different, and not in a good way. This time we are entering into a civil war that has already been raging. We are joining in a war that has thousands of different sides. There is obviously the side of Bashar Al Assad. We are definitely not on his side. And some estimates say there are over 1,000 different rebel groups. We are sort of, kind of, maybe on their side. Some of these rebel groups are terrorists and some of them are legitimate rebel fighters.

There's no doubt Assad is a terrible guy that should not remain in power. There's almost no doubt he used chemical weapons against his own people. There's no doubt that he killed peaceful protesters by the thousands and has slaughtered anyone who disagrees with him.

However, there's also no doubt in my mind that he is a problem of the Syrian people. They began fighting against him with full knowledge of his evil and capabilities. They knew the cost and they were willing to face it. The US does not need to be involved in their war. Similar atrocities have been committed by Omar Al-Bashir in Sudan, Somalia, China, Kim Jong Ill and Kim Jong Un in North Korea, and countless other countries. Sometimes, we decide that we should be involved, but in most cases we denounce these countries and don't really do anything about their atrocities.

Why should Syria be any different? Because chemical weapons were involved this time? Well, chemical weapons are awful, and there is some sort of international code that the use of them is unacceptable.

I get it, we don't want it to seem that the use of chemical weapons is acceptable. They tend to kill more civilians than they do actual fighters. But Assad has never been concerned about how many civilians he kills, and neither have any other evil dictators and warlords. Suddenly because we think he has used these weapons we should aid the side that is fighting against Assad. We don't know that this side is any better.

America is a country that fought for and won it's freedom. Yes, we had international aid, but for the most part Americans sacrificed their lives for freedom. War seemed different then, but war is always the same. There is no such thing as an easy war, and there is no such thing as a quick war.

Every war in history was begun on the premise that it would be over quickly. Both sides of the American Civil War thought the war would end quickly and everyone would move on with their lives. Four years and 625,000 dead young men later, people realized that war can never be quick.

Vietnam was the same way, no one involved in Vietnam thought it would last and cost almost 60,000 lives. The major mistake made in Vietnam is one that must be avoided in Syria. If a country enters a war it must have a clear objective and it must be willing to do absolutely everything that is necessary in order to achieve complete and total victory.

There is no such thing as a quick and painless strike. If we send a few missiles towards Assad and he remains in power, then we have turned Assad from an opponent of the US to an outright enemy bent on revenge. If we send these same few missiles and the rebels fight a bloody and long civil war, they won't remember the US help with kindness. Instead we run the risk of them becoming just like Afghanistan.

We aided Afghanistan in its stunning defeat of the Soviet Union in the 1980s only to have those same Afghan rebels use our weapons against us when we invaded in 2001 in response to their terrorist attacks on our soil.

The United States is unique in history in it's ability to rebuild countries that it has destroyed and become allies with them. It began with Reconstruction after the US Civil War when the Union helped rebuild the South that it had scorched. There is little in world history that is similar to this. However, this seems to only work with countries that the US completely and utterly defeats and then recreates in its own image. Japan and Germany are two of our strongest allies, but 70 years ago we were fighting them in the largest war in the history of the world. The only other times we have tried it have resulted in disastrous consequences. All other countries we have fought against since WWII are our sworn enemies. North Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now possibly Syria.

So, my advice, from a historical perspective: Stay out of Syria, provide aid to those who are suffering, but do not provide military support. This is not our war. We fought our own bloody Civil War without massive foreign aid. Almost all countries have gone through this. Yes, Assad is evil, but so are countless other dictators.

However, if we do enter Syria do not do it halfway. Do not enter in a little at a time. Make preparations and send the full and absolute power of the United States military, the greatest in the world, and win this war. Do not stop until we have total and utter control of the country and can create it again in our own image.

Of course, the second option is a terrible option. There is no way we would commit to something like that, its a terribly costly option in all possible senses of the word costly. However, if we learn from history, any military action could lead to something much worse.