Rod notes that the Post editors want the U.S. to start attacking Syria in response to the regime’s reported use of chemical weapons. What he doesn’t discuss in his post is how irrelevant their recommendations are to the use of chemical weapons. The Post’s proposal:

If they are, Mr. Obama should deliver on his vow not to tolerate such crimes — by ordering direct U.S. retaliation against the Syrian military forces responsible and by adopting a plan to protect civilians in southern Syria with a no-fly zone.

A no-fly zone isn’t going to target the missiles and artillery that the regime would use to launch more chemical weapons. As such, a no-fly zone might be imposed over southern Syria and civilians would still come under attack anyway. Establishing a no-fly zone creates the illusion of protection without offering the real thing. Foreign attacks on the Syrian military would give Assad another incentive to use more chemical weapons, and they certainly wouldn’t be able to prevent future use of those weapons. U.S. military action wouldn’t reduce the likelihood of more chemical weapons being used against civilian targets, and to the extent that it succeeded in weakening regime forces it would increase the chances that those weapons are captured by jihadists.

It’s true that launching attacks on Syria because of this would demonstrate that Obama doesn’t tolerate chemical weapons use on this scale, but this course of action wouldn’t secure Syria’s chemical weapons or prevent them from being used. It completely fails to remedy the evil to which it is supposed to be a response. This does nothing except openly commit the U.S. to war in Syria, and it sets the U.S. up for eventual escalation into a much larger military role in the conflict. As atrocious as any use of chemical weapons is, it still makes no sense for the U.S. to insert itself into Syria’s civil war.