Do nothing in Syria

Give inaction a chance

A B-1 Bomber.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Courtesy USAF/Getty Images)

If you're looking for evidence of the radicalism of the supposedly sensible, responsible center of foreign policy thinking inside the Washington beltway, consider the fact that of all the events of President Trump's rocky first year in office, the one for which he received the most fulsome praise from Republicans and Democrats alike was his decision to launch a barrage of Tomahawk missiles at Syria exactly one year ago this week.

The occasion of that attack was of course the apparent use of chemical weapons by Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in the country's bloody, interminable civil war. At the time, that civil war had been going on for six awful years. One year later, Assad has apparently used such nominally banned weapons again, and the result is exceedingly likely to be another barrage of missiles and more praise from Washington's Very Serious Thinkers, who will almost certainly limit their criticism of the military strike to saying it's too limited, too restrained, too little, and too late to make the difference America could have and should have made in the conflict years ago.

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Damon Linker

Damon Linker is a senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also a former contributing editor at The New Republic and the author of The Theocons and The Religious Test.