How Should America Respond to Syria’s Use of Chemical Weapons? | National Review

If it can be conclusively proven that Assad’s regime was responsible, Russia should be cautioned and then wipe out the Syrian Air Force with standoff weapons.

This is going to sound a bit extreme, but anyhow: I think it has long been time to deal with with problems at their source. Most of the bad actors in the world seem to be autocracies, which is convenient for where I'm going here. If Bashar al-Assad is someone who uses chemical weapons against civilians, then I think we can make the case that the world, or at least Syria, would be better without Bashar al-Assad in power. I don't mean to take a long-term approach of undermining his authority and separating the population by influencing them. I mean if he were no longer available to perform the actions involved in being in power, due to being confined elsewhere or what-have-you (the sky's the limit, here). I think this should be applied in more cases than just Syria and chemical weapons. Historically, we've fought some pretty big wars over problems that were caused by very small cliques of nefarious individuals. As nuclear proliferation (not thinking Syria here, thinking more broadly), makes big wars more dangerous, maybe we should avoid big wars by holding leaders of hostile nation-states, factions, and groups accountable for they do without necessarily dragging their subjects into it. There has long been some sort of feeling that this would be "impolite" (or some such notion) but I'm not seeing the problem.

Russia vetoes U.S. resolution on Syria chemical attack probes

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/10/russia-vetoes-us-resolution-on-syria-chemical-attacks-512514