“Last week, President Trump promised to withdraw from Syria. This week, he opened a new front against Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad that risks drawing the United States into a broader conflict there,” the Washington Post is reporting.
“By attacking Assad late Friday, the Trump administration says it sought to warn the Syrian leader against what Western nations said was his use of illegal chemical warfare agents, following the gassing of civilians near Damascus last weekend.
“The administration calculated that the need to send a signal to Assad over chemical weapons outweighed the possibility of provoking a response from his allies, Russia or Iran, on the battlefield in Syria, elsewhere in the Middle East or even in cyberspace.
“The risk, analysts say, is that the United States would then end up in a cycle of escalation that entangles the American military more deeply in the Syrian conflict than the administration intended.
“’Given the linkage between Russia, Iran and Assad, an attack that we would consider limited and precise might be misconstrued by one or more of those three parties and justify from their perspective a retaliatory strike,’ said retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. James M. Dubik, a senior fellow at the Institute for the Study of War. ‘Then what do we do?’”
The rest of the article is here.
Jeff Pelline's Sierra Foothills Report 
If Kennedy had listened to his generals during the Cuban Missile Crisis, we would have gone to war and it would have been nuclear. I think with the Syrian strike on Friday, the generals may have saved us from getting into a shooting war with Russia that we have no idea where that would end. The whole thing was odd, the Russian made S400 didn’t fire at the incoming missiles or US aircraft firing theirs. The Russian long range bombers moved to Iran with cruise missiles didn’t do anything. The US didn’t wait for the Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group to get to Syria, but I thought that was why they sent it out last week. My guess is Mattis wanted to get this over with in some way before we were too deep, save face and don’t provoke the Russians too much. So we bombed and destroyed a few building, Assad could care less, just look at what he does to his own cities like Aleppo.
Glad it is over; for now.
Syria and Russia had ample warning, because Trump is such an imbecile. Any chemical weapons or labs were easily and leisurely moved to safe sites. This was very bad political theater designed for morons. Just like the last time trump pulled this useless BS last year. His base swallows this crap like it’s manna from heaven. Collectively, this country has never been stupider then it is now. Which is how the GOP has designed it, with the impotent and spineless aid of the Democrats. We have exactly what we deserve. We are, to the rest of the world, the fools of the farce.