In aftermath of US attack, build anti-Assad coalition

Gut-wrenching images of dead and dying children heaped atop one another from Syria this week underscore the abject horror and inhumanity of chemical warfare. They also make one wonder just how far we’ve advanced as a civilized international community over the past 100 years.

After all, the first large-scale use of chemical agents in armed conflict took place during World War I, for which the centennial of the United States’ entry is being observed this week. Some 90,000 soldiers and civilians died as a result of nerve gas, tear gas and other chemical agents in that global conflict.

In its aftermath, international treaties have banned their production and use throughout most of the civilized world. Sadly, the world of Syrian despot President Bashar al-Assad is neither civilized nor humane as Tuesday’s chemical-based carnage viciously illustrated. In its aftermath, the U.S. and its allies must work steadfastly and resolutely in channeling outrage into possible punitive responses.

It was in the morning hours of Tuesday in the town of Khan Shaykhun near the border with Turkey that a heavy government airstrike produced massive civilian chemical intoxication. The release of the toxic gas, believed to be sarin, killed about 100 people, including dozens of children, and injured more than 557, according to the Idlib, Turkey, health authority.

By Thursday, despite protestations from the Syrian and Russian governments, proof beyond a reasonable doubt had been amassed to confirm the senseless slaughter as the most deadly chemical attack since the Syrian government’s August 2013 release of sarin in the town of Ghouta, which killed about 200 civilians. Officials of the Turkish government and the World Health Organization announced that the results of autopsies “confirm that chemical weapons were used.”

In the United States, President Donald Trump, to his credit, Wednesday night condemned the reckless attack. “When you kill innocent children, innocent babies -- babies, little babies -- with a chemical gas that is so lethal, people were shocked to hear what gas it was, that crosses many, many lines,” Trump said in the White House Rose Garden.

The American president, who heretofore had consistently reiterated his administration’s view that ousting Assad is no longer a U.S. priority, also acknowledged a major change of heart.

“My attitude towards Syria and Assad has changed,” he said.

TODAY’S US ATTACK

That dramatic change of heart escalated early today into a U.S. attack of approximately 70 Cruise missiles fired from a ship in the Mediterranean Sea at an airbase in western Syria, which is believed to have been the launching site of Tuesday’s chemical attack. It represents the first direct U.S. assault on the Damascus government since the beginning of that country’s civil war in 2011.

It is now up to the Trump administration to gather support from Western allies to build a strong and cohesive anti-Assad coalition to chart future strategy before undertaking any additional military action.

Though the missile attack today should send a powerful message to the Assad regime, the U.S. can ill afford to risk enlarging the conflict, particularly if any Russian troops on the ground in Syria should suffer injuries and death from the unilateral U.S. attack.

We would hope as well that the president’s change of heart extends to Syria’s leading global ally, Russia, toward which Trump has afforded kid-glove treatment during his first three months in office. Russia, after all, has clearly aided and abetted Assad’s massacre of hundreds of thousands of his own countrymen and women over the 6-year-long civil war. That war has ripped the nation asunder and contributed greatly to the ongoing immigration and refugee crisis worldwide.

To be sure, the chemical attack and now the U.S. missile strike have international implications and merit a concerted international response. At the very least, that means a unified and forceful condemnation of the attack from the United Nations.

Russia, however, thus far has refused to support such justifiable criticism toward its evil ally. Other members of the U.N. Security Council, including the United States, should exert additional coercive pressure on President Vladimir Putin to recognize the mounting evidence of this week’s inhumane gassing and other chemical attacks by joining in a united worldwide condemnation of the brazen inhumanity of the Assad government.