First, Andrew Napolitano cited the UN Charter not the NATO treaty. He wrote: "The U.N. Charter limits member nations' use of military force to defensive responses to actual attacks, pre-emptive strikes prior to nearly certain attacks and correctives pursuant to U.N. consent or pursuant to another treaty obligating military force to help an ally."

Your point about Turkey and NATO, however, is important. Consider Washington's Farewell Address.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_centu... (The Avalon Project of Yale Law School is a tremendous treasury of historical documents for anyone interested in constitutional law.) Washington warned against getting involved in Europe's wars. Regarding Turkey, the warning applies because we were forced between Turkey and Greece several times, most dramatically over Cyrus. The intention of NATO was to protect Western Europe from a Russian invasion. It was never intended to jump in on every border war, which is what any conflict involving Turkey in Syria would be.

In particular, the map of the Middle East - Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, Saudia Arabia and the Gulf emirates, all of that - was carved arbitrarily from the Ottoman Empire as their price for being on the losing side of World War I. France took its share (Syria, Lebanon); England got its (oil fueling stations for its fleet). There is no right and wrong, except as it was all wrong. Where in Iraq and all of that do you find Kurdistan? Why did the Kurds not get their own country? I mean, just arbitrarily ... as the whole thing was arbitrary ...

And the USA has been in the middle of it all, not just in any rational support for Israel, but meddling in the push-and-shove of the Middle East: selling arms to Iraq to fight Iran; then selling arms to Iran...

Look at a map. Was there any reason that Kuwait should not have been absorbed by Iraq? No one in Kuwait stayed to fight. One guy, a colonel with a jet fighter, put up a fight. The rest of the royal family fled because they knew that no one would fight for Kuwait. That is not what happened when Nazi Germany threatened Switzerland. But the Swiss are invested in Switzerland, literally. No one in Kuwait was invested in Kuwait because Kuwait was never really a nation with a history.

That message was clear to the Saudis. So, they hired the USA to invade Kuwait, push out Iraq, and protect Saudi Arabia. Our infidel presence in the home of Islam iis what angered the Wahabbis and Ussama bin Ladin.

And maybe they needed the wake up call to the 20th century, but there were many ways to achieve that without military intervention in a war that was none of our business. Saddam Hussein was not a threat to the United States.

Moreover, to the conflict at hand, if we were to take sides in Syria, it should be with the government of Syria. What do you know about Dr. Bashar al-Assad or his father, the previous ruler, Hafez al-Assad?

"If Asad will use Saran on his own people, even if they are considered rebels, he would not hesitate to use it on troops of another nation."

"A country that violates the rights of its own citizens, will not respect the rights of its neighbors. Those who do not recognize individual rights, will not recognize the rights of nations: a nation is only a number of individuals." -- Ayn Rand, "The Roots of War"

In your reasons for being "isolationist" rather than "world policeman" you left out that there is no justification for the US government to police the whole world. Our military is properly for the our national interest of protecting our own country, and there is no justification for any president to do anything else, including under treaties. It doesn't matter whether others think that anything is a "thankless job", "play Monday morning quarterback", or view us with "suspicion".

Napolitano is wrong in asserting that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" and "Syria is not a threat to the U.S., nor is it likely to become one". The Syrian government is not our friend, and easily deliverable weapons of mass destruction are a threat to everyone, especially from maniac dictators.

What we should do about it depends on an objective military assessment of what can be done and what is most effective in countering the overall threat, not a "principle" to bomb everything in sight perceived to be a threat.

Everyone should be appalled at the Syrian gassing of innocent civilians -- with or without seeing videos of children writhing under the affects of nerve gas. Anyone who wants to has a right to obstruct or stop that in any way he can, but it is not a justification for the US military to go off on an emotional mission. The threat of gassing cities in the US is a justification for it to bomb the regime that did it.

Trump emotionally appealed to "The chiiiilduuun" because he is a liberal, emotional thinker without objective principles. He tends to say what he thinks and feels as it shifts in the wind and in accordance with whatever he heard last, not rationalize his actions with propaganda contrary to his motives. But it is unlikely that that is what drove the military advice given to him regarding bombing Syria for its chemical attack.

We are the victim of the international welfare state in many ways. It's real, not type casting.

Sometimes an enemy of my enemy horrific tyrant deserves a very public slap down.

Anyone has a right to "interfere" with an "established" dictatorship. A maniac using nerve gas is a threat to everyone, creating an obligation to "interfere" in self defense against the threat.

Thank you for your service, but I found the actual numbers to be a pleasant surprise.
"The only incumbent veteran from either war to lose Tuesday was Illinois Republican Sen. Mark Kirk, who served a series of two-week reserve deployments in Afghanistan. He lost his Senate seat to Democratic Illinois Rep. Tammy Duckworth, who lost both legs when her helicopter was shot down over Iraq in 2004."
Military Times. November 9, 2016.
http://www.militarytimes.com/articles...