Trump's Syria Strike Was Unconstitutional and Unwise

Early the morning of August 21, 2013, six densely populated neighborhoods in Syria “were jolted awake by a series of explosions, followed by an oozing blanket of suffocating gas,” the Washington Post reported at the time. “Unknown to Syrian officials, U.S. spy agencies recorded each step in the alleged chemical attack, from the extensive preparations to the launching of rockets to the after-action assessments by Syrian officials. Those records and intercepts would become the core of the Obama administration’s evidentiary case linking the Syrian government to what one official called an ‘indiscriminate, inconceivable horror’—the use of outlawed toxins to kill nearly 1,500 civilians, including at least 426 children.”

Days later, President Obama declared that he was ready to order a military strike on Syria to punish its leader, Bashar al-Assad, for using chemical weapons while waging civil war, but as “president of the world’s oldest constitutional democracy,” he would consult Congress. Legislators never did vote to approve a strike, in part because the