I, for one, am utterly shocked to see that Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham came out today for Obama’s war on Syria. Excerpt:

“We still have significant concerns,” McCain added. “But we believe that there is in formulation a strategy to upgrade the capabilities of the Free Syrian Army and to degrade the capabilities of Bashar Assad. Before this meeting, we had not had this indication. Now the question is whether that will be put into a concrete strategy that we can sell to our colleagues, and that we can agree with.”

A strategy not simply to punish the Assad regime for its alleged chemical weapons attack, but to take sides in this civil war against the government — that is, take sides even more firmly and consequentially than the US already has done. Has there ever been a military operation John McCain and Lindsey Graham haven’t supported?

Last week, an NBC News poll found that the president barely got half the public on board for the minimal proposed response to Syria: sending cruise missiles against Assad. Worse for Obama:

In the NBC poll, barely a fifth of Americans said military action in Syria would be in the U.S. national interest, and just 27% thought a military strike would improve the situation there.

Meanwhile, in France, there are rising calls for a vote in the National Assembly on President Hollande’s plans to join a US military strike on Assad. A strong majority of the French people polled say they want no part of this plan.