Goals and a plan are needed in Syria

The U.S. decision to launch cruise missiles at Syrian President Bashar Assad’s airfield felt good after six long years of atrocities at the hands of a man with little regard for human life.

Images of children, women and men dying from what was likely sarin gas exposure in a Tuesday attack brought to our homes the horror and death and loss Syrians have known since the 2011 Arab Spring. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that without a doubt Assad’s army had dropped the chemical weapons, a clear violation of international law.

“No child of God should ever suffer such horror,” President Donald Trump said, announcing the U.S. air strike.

It’s not the first time that moral line has been crossed by Assad, but this is the first time the U.S. has responded with force.

That said, the sudden action raises many troubling questions. Moving forward, the president needs to articulate to Congress and the American people a clear goal for the future of the region and the role the U.S. and other international powers will play.

Ultimately, we’d like to see two things in Syria: an end to gross human rights violations, and an end to a war that the U.N. special envoy in Syria has estimated killed more than 400,000 people — a naive dream, perhaps, but worthy of articulation.

Trump’s turnaround needs to swiftly be informed by serious guidance from experts who have studied the complex political realities on the ground, where warring factions, include extremist terrorist groups like the Islamic State, hope to topple Assad and begin their own reign of terror– terror based in part on the religious disputes between Shiite and Sunni Muslims and the minority Kurds. Moderate rebels, who would be a clear improvement to the dictator Assad, seem to be hard to find.

The administration’s reversal is confusing, given that the horrors in Syria have been steady and indisputable. If Trump wishes to now remove Assad, his administration needs to explain how that’s supposed to work.

Troublesomely, there is one man in the world who could peacefully force Assad to stop bombing indiscriminately, targeting humanitarian aid convoys, striking hospitals and using chemical weapons: Russian President Vladimir Putin, a fact that presents an especially problematic situation for Trump as his campaign is under investigation for colluding with Russia.

Russia denies that Assad has chemical weapons or is using them, instead blaming rebels for the attacks. It would be a long diplomatic journey to get Putin from this place of denial to a place where he feels responsibility for Assad’s atrocities and threatens to pull Russian troops, planes and munitions from Syria’s battlefields.

Trump inherited a mess from President Barack Obama, who refused to get involved beyond helping to negotiate short-lived cease-fires, attempts to exert diplomatic pressures and a halfhearted backing of rebel forces. The United Nations has been rendered ineffective because of the outsize role Russia plays in that body.

One thing is certain: the airstrikes and subsequent comments about the need to remove Assad have drawn American into this fight in a way Obama worked hard to avoid. Now that we are in, we need a long-term strategy, approved by Congress and supported by Americans, to stop horrors that we all share responsibility for.

Diplomacy is obviously preferable to another Americanled war in the Middle East.