Trump did the right thing

President Trump did the right thing in striking an airbase in Syria in response to the Assad regime's chemical weapons attack on its own civilian population in Idlib Province.

President Obama should have rained tomahawks down on the Assad regime's assets when Assad flagrantly crossed the president's firmly-stated "red line" in a far worse Sarin attack in 2013. We must keep the use of chemical weapons stuffed in the verboten box, otherwise it will become normalized in that laboratory of hell once known as Syria, and we'll see more use there and elsewhere.

Barrel bombs, starvation and exile are horrible in themselves for the beleaguered Syrian population, caught between a brutal regime on one hand and murderous Islamic fundamentalist nihilists on the other. But chemical and biological weapons have, since World War I, been rightly regarded as a special category of horror. The world cannot afford to become desensitized to their deployment.

It seems doubtful that the strike is tied to a coherent Syria policy (to the extent that such a thing is possible). The musings of Eric Trump to a British newspaper indicate that it was in part influenced by Trump's daughter Ivanka being upset at the horrible images of hideously dying Syrian children. And surely there was some political calculation that a military strike would take some pressure off a floundering administration and boost approval ratings, as flexing muscle always does. It can't hurt Trump right now to be seen in opposition to Putin's aims and desires.

It is pointless to address the rank hypocrisy of Republicans who did everything they could to prevent Obama from acting in 2013, now praising Trump's strength and decisiveness. Rank hypocrisy is, after all, the coin of the realm in the Imperial City.

We can kick at the gigantic expense of the "message" Trump sent and question the effectiveness of the strike itself, which appears to be less bang than you might expect for $83 million, but ultimately, and regardless of any other calculus, it is a good thing - a necessary thing - to put consequences on the use of chemical weapons.

Jim Cornelius, News Editor