Let me get this straight: President Assad should be removed from office because he is killing so many Syrians. To punish him for killing Syrians, we propose to conduct missile/air strikes to kill Syrians. But to avoid killing Syrians (and Russians), we’ve given them about a week’s notice.

So, I wonder, what is the magic number of Syrians we need to kill to stop Assad from killing Syrians?

But killing Syrians is OK, as long as you (or we) use conventional munitions.  It is only not OK if you use chemical weapons.

Well, that clears it up.

Certainly, there is no good answer concerning chemical weapons, and it would be very helpful if there were some effective way to punish the people responsible for ordering and executing chemical attacks.  I just wish that we had options other than one-time air strikes, which don’t exactly have an unblemished record of success.

I am hard pressed to think of a single instance in which a single air strike (or a limited air campaign) actually accomplished some useful political or military goal.  Even if they are launched ostensibly as punishment for a specific act, isn’t their goal to influence future behavior?  Or are we just killing people because we can?  When did limited strikes actually change a regime’s behavior? Lebanon in 1983? Libya in 1986 (El Dorado Canyon)?  Iraq in 1996 (Desert Strike), 1998 (Desert Fox) and countless minor strikes in support of the no-fly zones from 1991-2003? Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998?  Kosovo in 1999? Syria in 2017?

Did Libya stop sponsoring terrorism?  Did Saddam Hussein calm down?  Did al-Qaeda give up their goal of attacking the United States? Did Syria stop using chemical weapons? Someone could argue that the air campaign in Kosovo succeeded in altering Serbia’s behavior, but it took 78 days, the loss of Russian support, and an increasingly credible threat of a ground invasion.

Military attacks are a pretty blunt tool, the exact consequences are unknowable, but frequently turn out to be counterproductive. Although I have no access to the information they have in the White House, I seriously doubt that there is some so-far undisclosed number of Syrians that we can kill that will force Assad to stop killing Syrians.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/11/politics/trump-missiles-tweet/index.html

April 11, 2018