Striking the Syrian Regime Is Not Legitimate

The story of American humanitarian war, as expressed over the last quarter-century, is a tragedy. It’s the tale of well-meaning interventionists like Samantha Power and Susan Rice who—haunted by America’s failure to act in Rwanda in 1994, and emboldened by America’s partial successes in Bosnia in 1995 and Kosovo in 1999—helped orchestrate a 2011 war in Libya that toppled a dictator but created something worse: a jihadist-filled failed state. The impact on President Obama was profound. In his second term, Obama—despite pressure to wage war against Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad—made clear by his actions that, at least in Syria, the era of humanitarian war was over.

It still is, kind of. after the Syrian government’s chemical attack last April. On Monday, after another apparent attack, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders that, “The images, especially of suffering children, have shocked the conscience of the entire civilized world.”