WASHINGTON — Despite Americans’ exhaustion with 11 years of foreign conflict, the victor in Tuesday’s presidential race may find it all but impossible to keep the United States from becoming more deeply entangled in the unfolding calamity of Syria’s sectarian civil war.
Pressure for Washington to play a greater role comes from a variety of factors: soaring casualty tolls, hundreds of thousands of refugees flooding into neighboring countries, wholesale destruction of Syria’s infrastructure, the growing presence of al Qaida-linked fighters, fears that violence will spill over into adjacent nations, and the danger that the Assad regime will collapse, leaving Syria’s chemical weapons open to theft.
“The longer this continues, the more sectarian violence is going to take place,” warned F. Stephen Larrabee, an analyst with the RAND Corp., a policy institute. “Sooner or later, the U.S. will arrive at a tipping point where it will have to decide if it will watch from the sidelines as the situation deteriorates or has to take some sort of action.” http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/11/01/173373/no-matter-who-wins-tuesdays-election.html