I think the issues is a lot more cut and dry than you're making out.
1. From what I understand, nobody actually has any concrete proof that Assad is responsible for the gassing. It could just as easily have been done by the rebels who are in no way innocent in all of the mess in Syria.
2. It was not the US' place to punish Assad. They are a foreign nation with no business being in Syria in the first place not a higher power that the rest of the other countries on the planet are meant to bow down to.
3. Sabre rattling or not, the escalating tension between Russia and the US is still a bad thing. The suspending of the policy that prevents open hostilities is not a good thing. We can talk about how Putin doesn't want a nuclear war or whatever, and I agree. However, people do stupid things over pissing contests all the time and if you think nutjobs like Putin and Trump aren't the type to get pulled into that kind of a conflict you're a terrible judge of character.
Just because the chances of open hostilities between the US and Russia aren't enormous doesn't mean they aren't there. It also doesn't mean that we won't see a repeat of the Cold War where they engage in a bunch of ridiculous proxy wars that drastically reduce global stability for the sake of their own egos.
I don't agree with making this out to be the end of the world but can we stop pretending this isn't a big deal either? It was a huge faux pas on Trump's part.
1.
https://www.cnn.com/2017/04/05/middleeast/idlib-syria-attack/
How concrete is concrete proof? Do you want a shell casing autographed by Assad himself? Yes, it's possible that Syrian government weapons can fall in the hands of rebels, so even if you could trace debris from the weapons back to the government, it's possible that they weren't the culprits.
But despite what Hands says, there is strong evidence that the Syrian government used chemical weapons during the 2013 attacks. For that matter, I would like to see why Hands believes so definitively that "Rebels" were responsible for those previous attacks. But back to the point, the Syrian government used to have a significant chemical weapons program which they never made public for decades until shortly before agreeing to destroy them. If that's their history, it isn't out of the question that they wouldn't have relinquished or reported the entirety of their chemical weapons stocks.
There's never definitive proof to these sorts of things, but I believe the balance of probabilities tilts towards Assad being the culprits. The Ghouta attacks of 2013 that killed about 800 civilians were believed to have involved too much gas to have been caused by rebels,
and there have been UN reports of government gas attacks since then. I would like to see the talk or speculation that the rebels were responsible ("could just as easily have been done") be substantiated. I would ask you, which side has more evidence in favour of its responsibility of the attacks?
2. No? So what happens when a country uses chemical weapons in violation of international law? If not the US, then whose place is it to punish those who use illegal weapons on so large a scale? Of course, it's always just a matter of the US trying to get all the other countries in the world to bow down to them, the deterrence of the use of chemical weapons means nothing.
3. I agree that tensions between Russia and the US is a bad thing. But politics being politics, the Russians had to do something to express their disagreement to the airstrike. You don't think Russia is contributing to the tensions as well? For perspective, Russia has played a much more active role in supporting "their side" - they've had thousands of troops on the ground for a much longer period of time (the US probably doesn't have more than a thousand, and they've only been deployed recently to support the advance to al-Raqqa), they've bombed "not-ISIS, not their side" for ages now (the Syrian opposition. American attack
s against "not-ISIS, not their side" - the Syrian government - wasn't started even a week ago), and they've left a much bigger footprint in terms of destruction delivered (70,000+ strikes overall by Russia, 8,000 strikes by US and allies).
The tensions game is difficult to play - nobody "wants" to escalate things, but it would be foolish to allow the other side to do what they want without responding.
I can't believe it just boils down to a pissing contest to you people. And that you guys blame it all on Trump. Do you honestly think Clinton or Obama wouldn't have done the same? Like it or not, the US is the only country in the world capable of using force to deter and degrade those regimes that would violate international law and commit horrendous crimes. I'm not sure if you guys would be comfortable with the idea of a world where governments everywhere are confident that there would be no threat of force if they used "banned" chemical weapons upon their enemies, because that is what you are suggesting if you so denounce the airstrike as inappropriate.
And did I really suggest that the airstrike isn't a big deal? All I did was mention that maybe, just maybe, that the deterrence of weapons of mass destruction is a big deal, that the use of force might be appropriate in order to punish a regime that's already had a history of using such weapons on people it deems traitors, and that might provide some sense to a decision that most of the posters here have been so quick to judge. At the very least it would've been a break from the Chicken Little RT (Russian News) circlejerk. The point of my post was about how it was a difficult call to make from a risk-benefit standpoint, when none - I say again, none - of the previous posts in this thread had anything to say about possible rational motivations, because Trump is a giant cheeto and has a big ego? Like I get it's really popular to go against mainstream opinion (but are we really?) in this day and age, but you have to be a bit more critical than only considering one side of the story. At least seriously consider the fact that there are legitimate reasons why such a response to the gas attack could take place? Obviously nobody has to agree with what I'm saying, but RT (Roundtable) being RT, I would hope that people would actually weigh the pros and cons of all the angles of an argument instead of just latching onto the one that's immediately agreeable to their personal politics.
I'm not sure how much more cut and dry I can get than hedging with incisive phrases such as "possible that neither will occur", "tentatively agree", "we'll see what the consequences are", and "the issue isn't cut and dry".
The hyperbole in this thread is insane. Oh, look at me, I swallow my words.
RE: edit - what did you take away from those articles? What I took away is that of course the US should state that it is "prepared to do more", because what use is a deterrent that you can use only once? If you don't lay it out there that you are willing to respond to the same chemical attack in the same way, then the message you are sending is that the US is not serious about deterring the use of chemical weapons.