President Barack Obama wants Congress to approve bombing targets in Syria to deter that nation’s dictator, Bashar Assad, from again gassing innocent civilians in that nation’s civil war.

However, bombing would be very risky because no one can predict the outcome of an American intervention. Although Obama’s proposal is for a "limited" action, it could trigger events that would, among much else, significantly affect the global travel and tourism industry.

Involving ourselves in Syria’s internal strife would be comparable to some well-meaning cops getting in the middle of a turf war between rival inner-city gangs. Neither gang likes the police, but either might accept their help to win. After the battle, however, the winners will turn on the officers and continue their illegal activities.

In the case of Syria, the "gang" lines are drawn — at the risk of oversimplifying an enormously complex situation — between two religious factions. Shiites, including the Iranian regime and the Hezbollah terrorist "militia" from neighboring Lebanon, are backing Assad, who belongs to a small Shiite sect. Syria’s majority Sunni Muslims generally support the rebels, who are widely reported to be increasingly dominated by jihadist factions linked to al-Qaida.

Both sides in the struggle can be expected to continue hating and trying to attack the U.S. and its allies. (Islamist radicals tend to equate Christians with the Crusaders who fought the Muslims centuries ago.)

An American attack on Assad would likely be seen in Syria and much of the Islamic world as another intervention in a Muslim country, increasing enmity for America by both sides in Syria — and by many others.

As heinous as Assad’s gassing of civilians is, former Congressman Newt Gingrich sensibly suggests the U.S. should not get involved in that issue but instead focus on the more critical issues of Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and the spread of militant Islamism.

No one can accurately predict the result of the U.S. Navy’s launching missiles into Syria.

» What would Russian President Vladimir Putin, an Assad supporter, do?

» What would Iran do with its missiles and possible nuclear capabilities?

» Would a U.S. attack on Syria give Iran or others an excuse to attack our ally Israel, the region’s only stable democracy?

» Might that possibility cause Israel to launch a preemptive strike to prevent Iran from getting "the bomb"?

History repeatedly shows that a single event can ignite a major conflict.

» World War I was triggered by the 1914 assassination of Austria’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

» The 1964 attack on the USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin by three North Vietnamese torpedo boats triggered the rapid escalation of the war in Vietnam.

Would a U.S. attack on Syria "awaken a sleeping giant" in the Muslim world, much as Japanese Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto is believed to have said about the United States after Pearl Harbor?

I also worry about the ramifications on our economy of a military strike. The exploding cost of entitlement spending has caused major budget cuts that have weakened our military. The national debt has soared to nearly $17 trillion, 58 percent above where it stood when the president took office five years ago. U.S. military action is likely to create a spike in the price of oil, damaging an already strained economy.

The U.S. is in a precarious situation, one of the worst I have seen in my nearly 80 years on Earth. That is what we should be debating. Not whether, even in an effort to stop the slaughter of innocents, we should be launching missiles into Syria.