by johnnyFive

I don’t believe for a minute that Trump, a man who has never demonstrated an iota of human empathy, actually decided to launch this attack because he was so moved by the thought of children being killed. I suspect it had much more to do with his desire to look strong and, above all, do something different from what Obama did. Nevertheless, the attack has reinforced the chemical weapons taboo. That in itself isn’t a bad thing for the world at large, but it doesn’t achieve very much. It would not be at all unreasonable for Assad to conclude that as long as he keeps killing civilians only with conventional weapons (and executing them by the thousands in his prisons), he’s free to carry on.