Just so you know, I'm not arguing with you or saying you're wrong, I'm just expanding on the conversation here.

Or drives us to vote for Evan McMullen.

I think it's important to acknowledge when our world leaders are doing better. I also think it's of equal importance to voice our concerns that we can still do better, for the reasons listed above. That said, to talk about any one person (in the case of Syria, Obama, Putin, Assad) as if the responsibility of the whole war and its resolution should rest squarely on their shoulders is entirely unfair. No single person can easily see these things coming. No single person can easily prevent these things from happening. No single person can bring about a swift and fair resolution.

Ideally speaking though? If we as a collective whole can desire to do better, we will do better. Sometimes I wonder why that idea gets lost in these discussions, even when I participate in them.

But this "oh, fucking failure, 26,000 bombs" thing is tedious, particularly when it's generally coming from the people pissed off that we didn't intervene in Syria immediately.

There's no pleasing some people, even with perspective. To a lot of people, all they see is a war that they don't want to happen. When you actually take a close look at it, you realize the water is muddy. When you take a step back, you realize you're staring at a sea of mud. What is this whole mess? Where did it honestly begin and why? Is it current economic and political issues? Is it a result of The Arab Spring and/or The Iraq War? Kuwait and the Gulf War? The Cold War? World War II? World War I? The Crusades? The first time a man picked up a rock and realized he could kill a man from another tribe with it?

This is something that is big, scary, and complex. If you take a step back and look at it, it's suddenly a lot bigger, a lot scarier, and a lot more complex. There are going to be people who refuse to consider that. They will be the ones who are unhappy no matter who does what and what their reasoning is behind it.

Does that somewhat invalidate their criticism, especially if they can't come up with constructive alternatives themselves? Yes. However, that doesn't invalidate their very real concerns that lives are being ruined, many of them irreparably and violently so. It's important to understand that while the criticism and concerns are very much connected, they're also two very different things.

That's Aleppo.

I know. I'm not Gary Johnson. I didn't choose that picture because it was the result of bombs (to be honest I don't know where, when, or why bombs have been dropped in this war). I chose that picture because it's the result of war. That picture is more than destroyed buildings. It's the destroyed works of architects, engineers, and construction workers. It's the destroyed lives of people who worked and congregated there. It's money that will be lost if people decide to rebuild that infrastructure, and while yes, that's an economic stimulus, so would spending that money on food, education, health care, entertainment, etc. also be a stimulus.

It's the most sanitary picture of the Syrian war that I can think of, the only one I'm comfortable sharing, and it still makes my stomach turn.