Trump Was Right to Strike Syria
For an overstretched military, poison gas is a convenient way to terrify and subdue a population. That’s why Saddam Hussein used gas on Kurds in 1988, and why Bashar al-Assad has used gas against his own people in Syria. The best way for the world to change the calculus is to show that use of chemical weapons carries a special price
.. Critics note that Trump’s air strikes don’t have clear legal grounding. They’re right, and that was one reason Obama didn’t act. But Bill Clinton’s 1999 intervention to prevent genocide in Kosovo was also of uncertain legality, and thank God for it. Clinton has said that his greatest foreign policy mistake was not intervening in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide; any such intervention also would have been of unclear legality — and the right thing to do.
.. I was against the Iraq war, but some military interventions save lives. The no fly zone over northern Iraq in the 1990s is one example, and so are the British intervention in Sierra Leone and French intervention in Mali. It’s prudent to be suspicious of military interventions, but imprudent to reject any use of force categorically.
.. My proposed course in Syria is the same one that Hillary Clinton and many others have favored: missile strikes to ground Assad’s small air force. This should help end the barrel bombs and make Assad realize that he has no military solution, and that it’s time for negotiation.
The most plausible negotiated outcome would be a long-term ceasefire and de facto partition of Syria, putting off reintegration until Assad is no longer around.