Globe Trot: U.S. airstrikes in Syria don’t constitute a new war

SYRIA: Overnight airstrikes by the United States against a Syrian air base believed to have launched Tuesday’s chemical weapons attack in Idlib province weren’t unprecedented and don’t constitute a new war. From the Mediterranean, the United States launched 60 Tomahawk missiles at Shayrat Air Base near Homs, killing 16. A September 2016 U.S. airstrike at a military base near Deir Ezzor killed at least 62 Syrian troops. But the shift to targeting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad was unexpected for President Donald Trump, who came into office pledging instead to bomb and defeat ISIS. It was also surprising for Trump, who, having banned Syrian civilians from entering the United States, appeared moved by the civilian carnage. “Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many,” he said in a statement last night.

Doctors Without Borders and a Turkish medical team have concluded the banned substance sarin gas and possibly another substance were used in the attacks. The Pentagon also released radar footage showing it tracked Syrian aerial strikes from Shayrat to the site of the chemical attack.

Some background: President Barack Obama took the United States into Syria’s civil war in 2013, deciding to arm rebels after U.S. intelligence officers concluded the Assad government had killed more than 100 people using chemical weapons. Obama said using such weapons again would constitute the crossing of a “red line” and would lead to direct U.S. involvement, but when that line was crossed in August 2013, in an attack outside Damascus that killed 1,000 Syrians, Obama instead threw the issue to the UN, supporting the creation of a monitoring regime and a Syrian agreement to hand over chemical stockpiles. That move brought Russia into the war, complicating U.S. moves. Syria repeatedly missed deadlines for eliminating chemical weapons but reportedly complied in late 2014. Yet such attacks have persisted. In an important article on current U.S. options, retired Gen. John Allen describes Obama’s decision not to strike in 2013 as devastating.

It’s important to note that following the 2013 U.S. stand down, ISIS and al-Qaeda affiliates near Idlib, Homs, and other areas repeatedly attacked Christians. By late 2013, the United States had allowed a large flow of weapons from Libya to Syrian rebel groups, and some of those groups attacked, brutalized, and killed Christians in the towns of Maloula and Sadad.

RUSSIA called the U.S. strikes an “act of aggression” but has agreed today to maintain a hotline with the Pentagon aimed at increasing cooperation in Syria.

IRAN: Last week, it appears, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was spotted in the area of last night’s strikes, and Shayrat has been a basing point for Iranian forces.

CHINA: Following President Trump’s meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping yesterday, the United States shouldn’t let China off the hook on human rights, said Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. His Congressional China Commission database carries extensive information about Beijing’s political prisoners, including Christians.

SWEDEN: A truck plowing into a department store today appears to have been a terrorist attack killing at least two people.

MINE: Next week marks the official release of the paperback version of They Say We Are Infidels, which includes a new chapter on the latest developments in the battle against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Also in the latest issue of The Review of Faith and International Affairs see my extended look at “Christians’ Response to Persecution Under ISIS.”