We send too many people to too many places to die. Syria is the latest country at which our military has been pointed.

   TV of the 1960s started, for most people, in black-and-white. The screens bore images of shades between black and white, mostly gray. About 1965 many households had color TVs. That was about the time the military conflict in Vietnam heated up. August brought us the Tonkin Gulf resolution, a blueprint for how a government can defraud the American public into "war." No longer were the images on TV so simple. Matters were not simply "right" and "wrong," but so complex the vagaries of "gray" were insufficient.

   United States military involvement in Vietnam was wrong---tactically, morally, economically, and on any other basis one wishes to employ. The same can be said for Iraq I and II. There might have been a plausible reason for troops in Afghanistan, but over a decade later, the plausibility is gone.

   Now  we are fed news to suggest United States forces should be committed to the overthrow of Syria's dictator Assad.  The United States has a lot of experience with dictators. We have installed them, propped them up, directed them and, when all else fails, gotten rid of them.

   Our society has aged from the early 1960s and the black-and-white of TV with its three networks, one local UHF station, and, perhaps, its public TV station. We have had color on our screens for nearly 60 years as a regular part of our lives. Today we also have the internet.

   The problems of Syria are not capable of being judged by simple means. Whether we should commit U.S. military forces to a fight there can be judged simply. We have had too many people killed and killed too many people in such conflicts already.