I don't know much about spilled milk but for insight into what America's interests in Syria might be, along with other contextual information,
consider the following written last year. If you don't feel like reading 16 pages of summary assessment, then consider instead these important bits:
The traditional definition of U.S. interests in the Middle East has centered on ensuring the free flow of natural resources and maintaining relationships with key allies and protecting them from external threats, in part to ensure access for U.S. military operations.
The political arrangements of the Middle East look vastly different now than they did when President Barack Obama took office. Popular uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen, three of which evolved into civil wars, have altered the landscape. These have resulted in occasional opportunities... But more often, this tumult has strained relations between the United States and its partners. This is largely attributable to Middle Eastern allies’ reduced faith in the U.S. security commitment... In the eyes of Arab rulers, not intervening to save Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak, chastising Bahrain for its crackdown on Pearl Square demonstrators, intervening in Libya’s 2011 civil war without a plan for postwar stabilization, allowing the chemical weapons red line in Syria to be crossed without going to war against the Assad regime, and ultimately concluding a nuclear deal with Iran are all evidence of the same sin: abandonment. It is hard to overstate how strained relations became with Ankara, Jerusalem, Cairo, and Riyadh in the second term of the Obama administration. Turkey alleged U.S. involvement in a coup against the government, felt betrayed by the United States partnering with Kurdish forces in Syria, and has now taken to coordinating its own cross-border operations with Russia. Israel publicly opposed the Iran nuclear deal... Riyadh mounted a military campaign in Yemen against U.S. urging and has prosecuted it in a way that Washington considers escalatory. And Egypt accused the previous American administration of cozying up to the Muslim Brotherhood while failing to recognize the legitimacy of the 2013 “corrective revolution.” These partnerships have always been rocky... But whether the state of relations between Washington and Middle Eastern capitals is at an exceptionally low point or not, it is objectively poor.
The role of building partner capacity, while grinding and often uncelebrated, is crucial for addressing another key challenge: assuring American allies that the United States remains committed to their security. What the Saudi-led operation in Yemen, UAE involvement in Libya, and Turkish operations in Syria should teach us is that in the absence of American actions that signal a commitment to partner security, local actors will deploy their military forces in ways that will sometimes be escalatory and threaten to draw the United States into broader conflicts... investing in reassurance ...is about mitigating the potential for independent action that undermines U.S. interests ...avoiding substantial involvement in the region, however appealing, is not likely to be possible, and the U.S. military needs to be ready for such contingencies. In such cases, both past experience and ongoing changes in the strategic landscape of the region argue in favor of military interventions that are limited in scale and modest in ambition.
For additional context, let us also consider what a
particular Neocon mouthpiece had to say about Syrian intervention in late 2016. Important bits:
The sad reality of international relations is that interests trump humanitarianism. The Security Council has deliberated, released statements and resolutions, and watched on as numerous cases of crimes against humanity came before it. Assad is not the first despot to inflict egregious crimes against his own people, and seemingly get away with it. When it serves the interest of a great power, morality is a footnote. And Russia is not the only party to the game—it is the standard conduct of all great powers.
If it is solely for humanitarian purposes, the United States will abstain every day of the week. It is necessary, thus, to determine what America’s interests are in the Syrian civil war, which remain unclear. Obama’s failure is not in that he has refused to intervene, but that, after five years of war, he has yet to clearly articulate what America’s interests are in this war.
Foreign policy was never a focus of the Obama administration, let alone Middle East policy beyond trying as hard as possible to look like the anti-Bush for PR reasons. Not only did Obama pass up opportunities to pursue American interests in the region, his administration didn't even properly establish what those interests were. Across his two terms the situation in the Middle East changed dramatically, that is to say half the Muslim world collapsed; including the part we'd just finished near-stabilizing six+ years into a counterinsurgency after Paul Bremer and the rest of the State Department fumbled an astonishingly swift tactical victory. We do nearly nothing in response to all the upheaval of the past decade, we don't try to maintain the status quo, we don't even consider the situation and define any sort of desired outcomes in our interests. Who does? Who goes beyond defining goals and actually asserts their positions in the region? Our little friends and our big enemies. When we do nothing, Russia, taking advantage of a vacuum, acts on their interests; Israel, lacking faith in our leadership, acts on their interests; Turkroaches, feeling a little of both, act on their interests; Saudi Arabia, lacking faith in our leadership, acts on their interests; Iran, taking advantage of a vacuum, acts on their interests. Our inaction has spurred action by others with conflicting interests, who will now step on the toes of one another and, if the linear course the Middle East has been on for the past decade continues, will escalate the situation militarily. What we are to do now with a situation that is magnitudes more intricate and dangerous remains to be seen. Time after time our military requested two things from civilian authorities to deal with the Middle East problem, defined goals and the operational independence to pursue them. From the Obama administration it received the opposite of both. From the Trump administration we've seen much more willingness to let the rest of the chain of command exercise their best judgement, but goals remain elusive. Do we like Assad? No, he's not /ourguy/, he's Russia's. Was there ever a plan to replace Assad? No, and there probably won't be at this point of escalation in the Syrian conflict. The "Red Line" only served to show everyone else in the region that America under Obama was full of shit when we didn't follow through. The time for showing people we were not full of shit was then, years ago. Further alleged uses of chemical weapons by Assadists may very well have provided and will provide opportunities to "topple the regime," but there was no plan to do so and no will to carry it out if it did exist. Media coverage of these events is its own reward for media companies, things that trigger an emotional response in the average consumer of news media, like gassed children, generate interest, discussion, and ad revenue. The media doesn't need an ulterior motive, they'll pump up whatever story leads them to cash, and dead kids makes people click. They don't drive policy. Joe on the street sees the headlines and is concerned, but if only he knew how bad things really were. The situation is actually such that his life as a materialistic sheep might be legitimately threatened as the trend of escalation continues.
If you're dead set on your milk metaphors, then it is entirely accurate to say that this milk was spilled several years ago by a different President. Except the milk glass is bottomless and has been pumping milk into our dining room continuously all those years. Also the milk is actually piss. We are now up to our eyes in piss. It is at this moment that news media looks in the window and says
my God! There's a puddle of piss on the dining room floor, won't someone think of the children? We grab an air-to-surface mop and begin to fruitlessly swish it about in our dining room full of piss.
tldr:
