President Trump Acts Against Syrian Regime while UN Security Council Dithers

On April 4th dozens of people, including children, died in a horrific way as a result of a chemical attack in a northern rebel-held area of Syria. Intelligence sources point to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad as responsible for the attack, which was carried out by relatively sophisticated aircraft and followed up by an air attack on a hospital treating the wounded. The United States, the United Kingdom and France promptly called for an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council to consider a draft resolution condemning the attack and demanding a thorough impartial investigation by the UN’s Joint Investigative Mechanism. Russia balked at such a resolution, and, along with the Syrian regime itself, blamed terrorists for the attack. More than a day of negotiations in an attempt to reach agreement on a consensus resolution proved to be futile. On Thursday evening, President Trump decided to launch a missile attack against the airbase within Syria said to have been the staging ground from where the chemical attack was launched. President Trump had declared his red line just the day before and, unlike former President Barack Obama, swiftly followed through with a narrowly targeted, proportionate attack to deter Assad from any further use of deadly chemical weapons.