If you believe, as I believe, that this POTUS is different, a great roar of opinion to the White House email might make a difference.
I encourage my fellow Kossacks to find out.
There are two legal grounds to strike another sovereign nation, self-defense or a police action authorized by the UN Security Council. Syria is not violating the chemical weapons treaty because it is not a party and it it not violating the Geneva Protocol because it's not a war.
What Syria did is immoral, not illegal.
What Mr. Clinton did in Kosovo was illegal but not immoral. Perhaps we should support actions in that category because that is, in the long run, where jus cogens comes from.
However, you don't arrive at a jus cogens, an enforceable standard of customary international law, unilaterally.
This is possibly the most unwise action we have seen this POTUS entertain. There is no upside. The downsides are legal, moral, and political.
We owe it to him to try to save him from his own rhetoric.
The smart money says the US will strike Syria unilaterally and soon.
I can't support this.
We can't create a jus cogens standard solo.
We've disclaimed taking sides in the revolution, as well we should.
Therefore, there's no reason to do this.
My heart does not not bleed for Bashar al-Assad. He's scum.
And any leader who drops poison gas on civilians deserves whatever gets dropped on him.
But nobody appointed the USA judge, jury, and executioner.
If we are going to take this action on the basis that while it may be unlawful, it's still morally correct, then we ought not be by ourselves in that opinion.
If the POTUS needs to cover his butt, punt the issue to Congress, where all important issues go to die. That has the advantage of being constitutionally correct as well as politically advantageous.