The lesson of the past the US should learn are those of Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein. When taking out a dictator who possibly has chemical and biological WMD, one needs to commit thousands of troops, overwhelming material forces and to also make sure the dictator knows ahead of time that using the WMD would necessitate a WMD response. So far, Obama/Hillary has failed miserably in all those regards. And there is a reason they have failed miserably. They attacked GWB for handling the removal of Saddam the correct way. Yes handling the aftermath in Iraq after removing Saddam had major problems, but we are not even close to removing Assad yet. And by the looks of things, these idiots in DC have not even thought about how they would handle a post Assad-Syria. Let alone the thousands of real Chemical and Biological WMD components.
This is a failure of historic proportions. They have been using Islamic Insurgents to topple the regime of Assad. The best outcome from their plan is to have these same Islamic insurgents eventually control Assad's vast chemical and biological WMD components. Their plan is based on either sheer stupidity or sheer insanity. Take your choice.
Another lesson we should learn is that we’ve not had much luck at all with the whole “coalition” warfighting thing.
Time and way way way past time to cut long term alliance programs loose. Talking to you, NATO and the UN. Don’t pretend we don’t see you over there in the corner sucking up logistics and finances for zero good gain.