Trump just went to war with Syria

File photo of US Navy warship firing a Tomahawk cruise missile

The United States attacked Syria directly Thursday night with dozens of cruise missiles.

The United States launched dozens of cruise missiles Thursday night at a Syrian airfield in response to what it believes was Syria's use of banned chemical weapons that killed at least 100 people, U.S. military officials told NBC News.

Two U.S. warships in the Mediterranean Sea fired 59 Tomahawk missiles intended for a single target — Ash Sha'irat in Homs province in western Syria, the officials said. That's the airfield from which the United States believes the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fired the banned weapons.

There was no immediate word on casualties. U.S. officials told NBC News that people were not targeted and that aircraft and infrastructure at the site, including the runway, were hit.

As is the imperial habit of US presidents these days, there was no authority from the Congress asked for or received before initiating a new war with a country that has not attacked the United States, nor poses an imminent threat to US lives.

On TV news reporting, President Trump stated that the strikes were "in vital national interests" of the United States. I would very much like him to explain in full just how. After all, in 2013 when President Obama was leaning toward the same action, Trump tweeted:

What, exactly, changed on the ground when Assad used chemical weapons this week? The casualty count hardly budged - hundreds of thousands of people have already been killed. Chemical weapons are indiscriminate and cruel, but are they more so than barrel bombs, area shelling and area bombing? And for that matter, does not the brutality of anti-Assad rebels, not just ISIS, pose a dilemma for the United States?

So what is really going on? I find it hard to conclude other than this cruise-missile attack was mainly a signaling operation aimed mainly at Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose first face-to-face meeting with Trump was tonight and will continue tomorrow. Trump has said repeatedly that he wants China to rein in Kim Jong Un's nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles programs. The signaling was also undoubtedly directed at Teheran as well.

As I type, Trump is on camera speaking of the cruise missile attack. He is speaking angrily about the images of the chemical attack's aftermath and the suffering of children caught in it. He is saying that it is in the interests of the United States to prevent the spread of the use of chemical weapons. I agree with that but protest strongly the unconstitutionality of Trump's attack against a nation with whom we were not already at war.

As I wrote in 2013,

"Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey made it clear that a few runs on target would do no good, that if the bombing was not be be merely symbolic, it would require a sustained, large effort of no short duration."

Does Secretary of Defense Mattis think differently today? If so, why? I also observed,

As for deterring leaders of other nations, assessing what example to make of Syria to deter them is like entering a dark room blindfolded, in the dead of night in a dense fog, to look for a black cat that may not even be there. Does anyone really expect that the Iranian government [or N. Korea's] will abandon its goal of attaining nuclear capability just because the United States mounted bombing campaign against Syria?

But Trump in his appearance tonight did not mention encourager les autres as a motive for the cruise missiles. The only stated motive was deterrence. If the question is only protection of the innocent, then I want to know whether this administration considers chemical weapons to be sui generis so that American warmaking on their users is justifiable for that reason alone. That is: in a civil war in which everyone agrees that hundreds of thousands of people on all sides have died, untold numbers of whom were murdered outside the laws of war but by conventional means, is the use of chemical weapons by itself a just cause of war for the US to wage on Syria, a nation not at peace with itself but with which the US is now at peace except for al Qaeda and ISIS terrorists with whom the US is already at war?

If that is the case being made, then it is being made very, very poorly. Let the case be made if there is one to make, and let it be made coherently and sensibly within the framework of existing US law and justice.

Syria's Shayrat airfield, the target

Because otherwise, absent a direct and imminent threat to US lives, there is no Constitutional justification for tonight's attack. Stopping the spread of chemical weapons is not exactly a new goal for the US government; every president since Woodrow Wilson has oriented on that. What was the urgency for this attack now that foreclosed deliberations with bipartisan leaders of the Congress on how to proceed?

No one ever made a good decision in anger. I fear that that this president has set the table for us to learn (again) the hard way the ancient proverb, "Decide in haste, repent in leisure."