Hello.

I'm John Don Van, host and moderator of Intelligent Squared U.S.

One note before we begin, the debate you're about to hear was recorded in early August,

while news coming out of Syria is evolving.

This debate provides an important grounding in the key issues at stake for U.S. involvement.

The panelists delivered a debate on the long view, and those arguments still stand.

There are times when, for a president, there is nothing to debate.

We are attacked.

You go to war, Pearl Harbor, September 2001.

Other people's wars, those are trickier.

The U.S. intervened to put an end to the killing in Bosnia and was glad that it did.

The U.S. was passive about mass killing in Rwanda and ended up regretting that.

So now there is Syria, and it is a mess.

A death toll that is crossing into six figures, millions of people homeless, a dictator who

is suspected of using chemical weapons against his own people, and fighters thousands of them

from all over the world descending on the chaos with a vision of creating an Islamist state.

So does it be who the U.S. urgently and immediately to get more involved in Syria, up to and possibly

including military action, or is the wiser thing for the U.S. when it appears there are

no good options to stay back, and maybe this time let somebody else mostly sort out the

problem.

Now that sounds like a debate, so let's have it.

Yes or no to this statement.

...