This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, April 26, 2013.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The drumbeat for U.S. intervention in Syria continues.

This time the argument revolves around the possible use of

chemical weapons by the Assad regime. Chris Preble, Vice President for Defense and

Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, argues that U.S. intervention in Syria would create more problems than it would solve.

Whenever the United States is called upon by some group somewhere to intervene in a foreign country, it's almost always, it seems like almost

always a no-fly zone is a starting point.

And that is sort of one of the key starting points of the calls to

intervene in Syria. Right. We see that a no-fly zone is often a slippery slope.

Now, slippery slope arguments are notoriously, well, slippery.

It's not true, of course, that it's inevitable

that that kind of military action leads to other action, but it is true that

no-fly zones are very rarely sufficient for addressing the problems on the ground that is driving the violence in general.

We saw that in Libya where the no-fly zone became a no-drive zone within a matter of days,

if not hours, because it was immediately realized that the no-fly

is on wouldn't be enough to prevent in that case an assault on the on the city of

Benghazi that the Muammar Gaddafi's forces were bearing down on.

In the case of Syria, it is hard for me to see how a no- fly zone would be effective in reducing the violence on the ground which is being

perpetrated in the context of a civil war.

It is different factions within Syria fighting for control, fighting to drive the Assad government

and its supporters from power, fighting to assert control over certain parts of the country,

...