Reply #13: Capability is what stopped it. We simply cannot wage another

[skip fox]

war comfortably with current troop strength. Everybody's already bitching about rotation. Can you imagine the headaches of having another 100,000 troops fighting and patrolling in the Middle East?

But this thread's implicit question, of "why not?" implies, correctly, I think, that we would if we could.

There are also global-political reasons for not attacking Syria and pragmatic reasons for not attacking Iran or North Korea (they're crazy and could well "clean our clocks" if we weren't at full troop strength.