President Trump Orders Air Strike on Syrian Airfield and Chemical Depot
By: William Ferrara
Tags: Airstrike, Syria, Donald Trump, Assad, United States

President Trump Orders Air Strike on Syrian Airfield and Chemical Depot

Announced at 8:45 PM EST, The United States Has Escalated the War in Syria by Deploying Tomahawk Missiles Against an Assad Airfield

The USS Philippine Sea Launches a Tomahawk Missile from the Eastern Mediterranean on Friday Morning EETZ. (Photo: P.O. 1st Class Eric Garst, US Navy).

Tonight I sit in front of my TV like millions of Americans, finding a special bulletin scrolling across the screen; President Trump has bombed Syria. More specifically, President Trump bombed the al-Shayrat airfield, from which Assad’s chemical attacks were launched earlier this week.

Trump, who during his campaign was vehemently against any American involvement in Syria, changed his tone this week, decrying the chemical attacks by Assad as “a disgrace to humanity” and claiming “it [the gas attack] crossed a lot of lines.”

As of yet, there is not information out surrounding the conditions on the ground — however, we do know that 59 Tomahawk missiles were dropped over the span of a minute. For those of you not familiar with military weaponry, there are several classes of Tomahawk missiles, with an explosive load of 1000lbs. 59 of those in a minute is more than enough to ruin anybody’s day.

The potential ramifications of this attack, however, are as diverse as they are disastrous. In contrast to the American report that Assad ordered the chemical attacks, Russia still claims that Assad’s air strikes hit a terrorist warehouse, releasing the Sarin gas on impact. Videos of the aftermath have circulated the internet, showing the horrors of these chemical weapons. Entire families were wiped out, in some cases the sole survivors losing upwards of 15 loved ones in a matter of minutes to excruciating deaths.

If the videos aren’t enough to convince that this gas is vicious and utilizing it is cruel, note that while in the Army, I vividly remember having the Sergeant conducting our chemical training in Basic Training telling us that if we were ever exposed to Sarin gas, the best option would be to shoot ourselves and end it quickly.

Getting to potentials for serious conflict, it is worth noting that Russia has continuously backed the Assad regime in the region, and their involvement brings up some dangerous hypotheticals. While early speculation is that no Russian forces were in the immediate area of the attack, there remains the potential for disaster if Russian forces were in any way involved. Regardless of Russian involvement, if Putin feels slighted or attacked in any way, there’s no telling what could happen.

There is no evidence that this is an act of war — in fact, President Trump made it fairly clear in a late night press conference that war is not the intended consequence. It seems that this strike was intended to be a strong message to Assad and the rest of the world that no chemical attacks will be tolerated. As it has been presented thus far, the current administration seems to desire this to be an isolated and final incident. We will continue to monitor and update as the situation develops.

Reported at 10:26PM, EST. Updates to follow.

UPDATE (1) 10:43 PM EST: It has been reported that there were Russians on the airfield at the time, despite their being warned about the airstrike beforehand.