For interests on both sides of Syria's civil war, the past two weeks have been the time to increase the pressure. Hezbollah sent reinforcements to the troops of President Bashar Assad, and Russia reiterated its intention to furnish the regime with weapons. At the same time, Republican Sen. John McCain secretly visited rebels and promised to push the administration of President Barack Obama to arm the retreating forces. The European Union allowed its weapons embargo to lapse as nations such as Britain and France appear increasingly eager to aid the opposition fighters.
But amid the burst in outside engagement, one influential group seems noticeably silent. The liberal hawks, a cast of prominent left-leaning intellectuals, played high-profile roles in advocating for American military intervention on foreign soil — whether for regime change or to prevent humanitarian disasters. They pressured President Bill Clinton to intervene in Bosnia, provided intellectual cover on the left for President George W. Bush's war in Iraq and urged Obama to engage in Libya. But even as the body count edges toward 100,000 in Syria and reports of apparent chemical-weapons use by Assad, liberal advocates for interceding have been rare, spooked perhaps by the traumatic experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan and the clear reluctance of a Democratic president to get mired in the Middle East. Call them Syria's mourning doves.
"Everybody has their own ghosts to deal with," said Vali Nasr, a former Obama administration official and leading proponent of intervention in Syria. "But those people understand that what is going on in Syria cannot go on indefinitely."