The fact is that post-America has no discernible foreign policy

Mario Loyola at NRO is that rare breed: a conservative who thinks a strike on the Assad regime is a good idea.  He readily admits, however, that it's a shaky course of action in the present circumstances, because such a move would not be anchored in any kind of consistent principles:

The Bush doctrine focused on the confluence of rogue regimes, terrorism, and weapons of mass destruction. It called for early preemption of gathering threats and the spread of democracy to drain the swamp in which threats take root. But the Bush doctrine was largely discredited by the trauma of the Iraq war, particularly among independents and younger conservatives of a more isolationist bent. The doctrine was replaced in the Obama administration by a fluffy collection of meaningless platitudes and campaign talking points. Since then, America has been almost totally permissive of rogue regimes that support terrorism and proliferate WMD. It no longer has any real policy of confronting them. Hence there is no real “threat” against Syria or Iran, and if there is no threat, there can’t be a credible threat. 

It certainly is worrisome that Obama is in danger of not following through on an explicit threat against Syria’s use of chemical weapons. But the source of his threat was not U.S. national-security policy. It was an “international norm” that matters mostly to proponents of world government among the academic Left. That group does not have enough influence to provide Obama with a solid majority in favor of strikes, so Obama has had to go looking for support among proponents of the old Bush doctrine. And they insist that any military strikes must materially weaken the Assad regime, enough to bring it down or at least push Assad to the negotiating table. To get their support, the administration is expanding the target list. But that does not mean Obama has embraced the Bush policy (which Bush himself often shied away from) of confronting rogue regimes that support terrorism and proliferate WMD. Even if he carries through on his threat, the threat doesn’t stem from any consensus policy, so strikes can’t make the policy more credible. 

Which is why most of us on the right are making the hard call in the other direction.  Not that that choice won't have unsavory consequences.  But then, unsavory consequences are a given when your nation is presided over by the Most Equal Comrade.