at some point you keep pouring more and more whether it's human resources, military resources, economic resources and you're just not going to get a return in any way on your investment. it's hard. it's hard sometimes to stand back when you see bad things going on. there's a great line in godfather iii where michael goes, every time i want to pull away, they keep pulling me back. and the united states, though, has to resist the temptation to allow the middle east to totally dominate. it's done it now for more than a decade. there's big stuff going on elsewhere in the world. in asia, where the great powers of the 21st century are potentially colliding. in north america, where we've got 450 million people and we're on the cusp of a massive energy boon. we've got to focus on rebuilding the bases of american power just so we can be effectively involved in the world. so sometimes leadership is putting ceilings, putting limits on what it is you do. and that's what the united states needs to do in the middle east. >> that would be very difficult i think at this point in syria.