A number of people have asked my thoughts on the US/UK/French bombing of Syria this weekend. My primary response is, this is a complicated situation, and this particular bombing did nothing to make it less complicated. I’m also not sure that it will have any effect on the final outcome in Syria. A few details:

Did Assad attack his own people with chemical weapons? While many don’t see it, there is some serious dispute about this on the left in particular. They typically question why Assad would do this, since he is already winning the civil war, who else might be responsible, and even if the attack actually occurred or was just made up as an excuse to bomb Syria by the West. My take here is that if you want to doubt, you will find reasons. BUT that being said, I also think Occam’s Razor (look for the simplest solution) suggests that the Syrians did attack their own people for a few reasons. Social media posts were an early source of the attack photos, and the number we saw are hard to fake. The OPCW and other aid groups have confirmed numerous Syrian attacks in the past, and this fits the pattern. And most importantly to me, if this wasn’t Assad, then instead of standard, mild denials from Syria, both Syria, Russia and Iran would be SCREAMING that they didn’t do it, and would be jumping at opportunities to provide evidence of other sources. But how did Syria benefit you might ask? The simple answer is “more terror for the Syrian people,” which benefits the Syrian regime right now in their efforts to retake control of the country. This likely isn’t going to convince a nay-sayer, but I think there’s enough evidence to accept that Syria did it.

Next, we the assaults legal? This one is more complicated, but the short answer is “no, but does that really matter?” The problem is, this is about the US and others exerting power, and legality tends to get pushed to the side when that happens. So is it legal under US law? Maybe, although the Constitution suggests the President can’t do this, the War Powers Act and contemporary interpretations of the Constitution suggest he can. That being said, it is against a variety of international laws we have ratified, in particular the UN Charter, and according to Article VI of the Constitution those are the laws of the land, so the President legally SHOULD follow them. Assuming for the moment that Syria did it, they violated the Chemical Weapons treaty — but that treaty does not mandate specific action, this is left to the UN Security Council. And while the Council has authorized action against ISIS in Syria, they have not authorized action against the Syrian regime. And as much as we want to claim that EVERYTHING is a matter of US interests and self-defense, there is simply no legitimate self-defense interest going on in Syria. So no, it’s not legal. That being said, the US/UK/France will continue to make excuses and use legal language in an attempt to justify this, as we don’t want to flat out SAY we did something illegal. But we did it regardless.

Finally, will this accomplish anything? My current educated guess is “no,” but the situation is so complex on the ground that it is hard to say. The good news is, World War III is unlikely here — the Russians, Iranians (and Chinese, not sure how they get wrapped in here all the time) simply don’t have enough interest in Syria to go to war with us over this type of bombing. We were careful not to hit foreign troops (at least not Russians), which was important. Other than that though, they’ll bitch and moan, but it will just be a verbal slap on the wrist.

Will it stop the Syrians from attacking again? Very unlikely. We didn’t REALLY hurt Assad here, even if we did manage to take out some chemical weapons plants/storage/science facilities. If he wants to continue using WMDs against his own people, he is likely to do so. In fact, our attack very likely will only serve to support his position at home among his core constituents, who see us as invaders anyway. From their perspective he is being hard-core in stopping the civil war, and damn the consequences. For this supporters, this is a war of survival, and they are unlikely to care about the means. This is a sad truth, and I certainly hope that at some point Assad and others are captured and put on trial for war crimes because of it — but if they are willing to commit war crimes, this type of attack is unlikely to stop them in the future.

And does the US suddenly care about either the Syrian people or  use of WMDs now? Once again, of course not. On WMDs, we could be doing FAR more to stop Assad if we really wanted to – this is barely a pin-prick in his operation. And do we care about the Syrian people? Of course not. If we did, we’d be letting MANY more refugees into the country and providing MUCH more support to others receiving refugees, instead of cutting our inflow to only 17 people last year, down from over 15,000 the year before. Instead it is incredibly likely that this is simply another US president using a foreign military operation as an attempt to turn the news cycle away from bad news at home. It’s not a Trump thing, as pretty much every US president has done it. But it is callous and uncaring of who gets hurt or why, which is very “US” of us.

In closing — we need to remember that 500,000+ people have already been killed by the Assad regime in this war, and only a few thousand of those by chemical weapons. This an abhorrent, but limited activity for someone who is already a butcher of his own people. I don’t expect the killing to stop anytime soon, and unfortunately the Syrian people will continue to suffer.