On the question of Syria, I think I can approach what is happening from a military-political viewpoint and be largely non-partisan. My perspective:
  • Assad needs to be stopped. Using chemical weapons against your own population is a heinous crime against humanity and violation of multiple international agreements.
  • there is no reasonable opposition to turn to at this time (nor has there been since this started), so no one internally to back to stop Assad.
  • both the presence of ISIS, and complicated politics with the Kurds in the North and Turkey make this an even bigger mess
  • I am not per se opposed to a measured, planned response after a chemical weapons attack like the one we saw this week. That being said, I don’t know (and neither do you) if we have enough information to make a measured decision. Also, any attack in Syria can lead to blowback and/or unintended consequences that draw us into the conflict
  • getting involved on the ground in Syria is a no-win situation, as is putting up a no-fly zone that the Russians will immediately violate
  • any action now is probably too late in the process regardless — what will it accomplish?
  • from what we know now, the US targeted a Syrian military base. At most this will serve as a mild and temporary “punishment” against Assad, unless we keep it up after every Syrian attack, which would draw us into the conflict
  • should Assad be brought to justice for this attack and others like it? Yes. The problem is, targeted attacks like this do no more than mildly punish Assad, and give him an internal enemy in the US
  • was the attack legal? Under US law almost certainly, as long as it is reported to Congress. Under international law? Probably not in a technical sense, but the NATO bombing of Kosovo in 1999 set a legal precedent of sorts for action in a serious humanitarian situation that steps outside of the Security Council structure if the Council is deadlocked. The question is, will the Russians, China or others push back against us or let it slip by (as they did in Kosovo)
All of that being said, I think the real question here is “what will Russia do?” Because they have many planes, support troops and advisors on the ground in Syria right now, and this will potentially put US and Russian troops at direct odds. And that would be VERY bad. After that, the question is whether this is a one-off attack, whether we follow-up in tit-for-tat fashion with more air attacks when Assad does other things, or whether we get drawn into the horrific morass that is Syria.

I think we’re about to find out how the generals in Trump’s administration want to deal with this problem.