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Syria Will Require More than Cruise Missiles
(Washington Post) Eliot A. Cohen - The scale, openness and callousness of the Syrian government's breaking of an important taboo seems likely to compel this president to launch warplanes yet again in the Middle East. The temptation here is to follow the Clinton administration's course - a futile salvo of cruise missiles, followed by self-congratulation and an attempt to change the topic. It would not work here. A minority regime fighting for its life, as Assad's is, can weather a couple of dozen big bangs. More important, no one would be fooled. As weak as the U.S. now appears in the region and beyond, we would look weaker yet if we chose to act ineffectively. The writer, who directed the U.S. Air Force's Gulf War Air Power Survey from 1991 to 1993, teaches at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.