Do you support the missile strikes on Syria?

[pbrower2a]

My gut feeling is that I will get some grim satisfaction as Bashir Assad and his bloodiest henchmen dangle at the ends of ropes. I fear that this war between the US and Syria will become a mess as did wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, not so much because the country is Syria but because the President is Donald Trump, who knows neither caution nor restraint.

I have much more concern about Syria.

[pbrower2a]

I think an additional reason for the strikes was to send a message to China about North Korea (and indeed about China and Taiwan). Its a way of saying don't mess with me. As a demonstration of raw power it should also help his poll numbers.

If anything it could suggest that the President is distracted. Consider this: the Soviet Union took over the three Baltic republics in 1940 as France fell to the Devil's Reich.

Any solution to warmongering by North Korea requires coordination with North Korea's frenemy China. North Korean leadership has more cause to fear China than any other country, including the USA or South Korea. 

[pbrower2a]

Too early to tell. Americans may feel good about themselves for doing something against a tyrant who violated a standard that even Pol Pot and Idi Amin dared not violate. We do not yet know whether the strikes were adequate or whether they were reckless or misguided. If the President were someone other than Donald Trump I might not have this misgiving.

[pbrower2a]

violated a standard that even Pol Pot and Idi Amin dared not violate.

That's... not the way too look at this.

They had other ways of killing, not that those were better. It's hard to distinguish one premeditated murder from another.   The Romans cast Christians to bears, lions, and tigers; Nazi guards entertained themselves on occasion by letting underfed dogs attack helpless prisoners. The juvenile-delinquent culture of the Middle Ages burned witches and broke heretics on the wheel -- or was it the other way around?

The world did nothing to Saddam Hussein for gassing the Kurds. He might have been tried, and likely hanged, for that, but the Iraqi tribunal that convicted and sentenced him to death found him guilty of an earlier, less-well-known atrocity.