This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, June 4th, 2013.

I'm Kila Brown.

John McCain has made some interesting friends in Syria,

opponents of the Assad regime who have some less

than savory ties themselves.

So why do it when the risks are so high?

Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, talks about the push for war in Syria.

I think John McCain was well intentioned.

There are people who are fighting a bad regime.

I mean, Bashar Assad is a despot.

The problem is I think McCain's visit shows how difficult it is to make moral distinctions

among these people.

It appears he got his photo taken with some guys who kidnapped a bunch of Shia pilgrims from Lebanon.

These really aren't what we would call freedom fighters. He obviously couldn't

make the distinction and that's pretty embarrassing and that shows the problem of

jumping into a conflict if you don't know what you're doing.

Well beyond that what is driving the effort to get the United States engaged in the conflict?

There are a couple of things going on.

You know I get a sense John McCain and some others just seem to have this desire that America

has to be involved.

If there's a problem somewhere, America has to be involved.

A better argument's made by some, which is this is a messy conflict that's

...