If Assad doesn’t suffer for using chems, the whole world pays

UPDATE: To give some context, I think I posted this a few minutes before the first news reports of the strikes on Assad.

I like Ralph Peters' columns in the New York Post. The NYP isn't in the same stable as Foreign Policy, but his columns are usually pretty good. His most recent column addresses the chemical attack perpetrated by Assad in Syria.

I'm not sure ought to be done about Syria and Iraq. However, one line in Peters' column stands out to me:

"Deeds, not words, Mr. President."

Peters directs this line at President Trump, and issues it in regard to the chemical attacks by Assad. However, I would expand it beyond the subject of chemical weapons and direct it to the last 3 presidents (Clinton, Bush, and Obama), as well.

Washington D.C. should speak clearly, yet softly. The louder and more often a government speaks, the less attention the world needs to pay to the words spoken. Speak loudly and engage in theatrics, and you appear insincere. Speak softly and back up your words with action, rather than repetition, and you'll have their attention on every syllable you speak.

My limited experience in the Army left me the impression that chemical weapons are probably not very effective on a conventional battlefield, when used against a modern army, but rather are most likely to employed by an enemy as a terror weapon, especially against civilian targets. I am much more disturbed by the specter of nuclear weapons in the hands of rogue states or their proxies.

With the possible exception of Stuxnet, nothing has appeared in the news that would lead me to think that Iran's nuclear weapons program has been seriously inconvenienced. If you were a highly-placed Saudi royal, what would you be working on developing right now, as fast as you could? How about if you were a senior official in the Egyptian government? If you were Turkey's new despot? And then, in the northwestern Pacific, there's always the most recent installment in the North Korean communist dynasty.

All this has proceeded along with lots of talk from Washington D.C. about how the West won't tolerate nuclear proliferation. To simple me, here among the great unwashed outside the beltway, it appears that we've done quite a bit of tolerating just that.

I don't have a plan to suggest to address the threats, but I do observe that what is called for takes the form of deeds, rather than words.