Al-Shayrat airbase, as borrowed from an Airbus satellite image.
It’s worth mentioning the military parts of this attack. Tomahawk missiles are wonderfully accurate weapons that can drop 1000 pound payloads wherever you want. They fly so low they’re unstoppable even by the Russian-installed anti-aircraft batteries that Syria has in so many locations.
If we meant to follow this up with something more, we’d have targeted the Syrian anti-aircraft defenses. Trump chose to only make potholes in the Al-Shayrat runways, which they’re categorizing as a ‘measured response’. They also might have hit the aircraft fueling pumps and some airplanes. We don’t know if they hit the tower.
I shouldn’t scoff. This probably was a perfectly measured response, and not an overreaction. I put scare quotes around it because most of the press adopted that characterization without so much as a blink, much less an analysis.
Trump’s missiles may have hit the chemical weapons at the runways. If so, there’s a decent chance there might be a spill. Expect Assad to blame the US for any casualties, especially if it poisons Russian troops, or the Iranian National Guard troops who might be stationed there. Al-Shayrat was a secondary airstrip, but it was used to house many foreign troop forces prior to deployment.
We still don’t know what happens next. That’s the part that scares me.
