Remember that tragic picture of a drowned Syrian refugee? It broke hearts all around the world. Never mind the story behind it, which soon fell apart. (The family had been living safely in Turkey.)

That photo overwhelmed rational argument. It ended debate. It helped sway Angela Merkel to admit a million Syrian refugees into Europe, via Germany. The continent is still reeling from the results: A rape epidemic in Sweden, “refugees” committing terror strikes in Paris, mass attacks on women in Germany … the list of appalling outcomes goes on and on. Turkey now threatens to send 2 or 3 million more “refugees” from the safety of camps in that country — if the E.U. won’t cave in to Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s demands.

It All Happened Before in Iraq

Remember the warnings that Saddam Hussein was preparing nuclear weapons? How about the promise that “Iraqi democrats” like Ahmed Chalabi would set up a pro-American regime in that country and guarantee religious freedom?

Fast forward past the missing WMDs, and the absolute chaos that erupted in that country when we removed its secular strongman. What’s Iraq like now? It’s a firm ally of Iran, with large swathes of the country devastated (or still controlled) by ISIS. One million Christians whose families had lived there since the age of the Apostles are huddling in refugee camps. And the nation still can’t pump its oil.

We Handed Iran to Khomeni

Think back a little further in history, and recall the tragic reports from Iran in the 1970s. I grew up hearing horror stories about what happened to Islamists and Communists at the hands of the Shah’s secret police. (The Shah, while a dictator, protected the rights of women, Christians, and Jews, and was a firm American and Israeli ally.) Those stories are what moved Jimmy Carter to yank out U.S. support.

So we handed that vast country over to the most hidebound Shi’ite extremists. They promptly took U.S. hostages. The threat they posed to their neighbors goaded Iraq into a war of aggression. More than a million people died in the war that resulted. Christians are hunted there now. The Iranian government lowered the age of consent for girls to 9. There is no more freedom now than existed under the Shah. And the country is rolling steadily toward building nuclear weapons that can menace every U.S. ally from Israel to Italy.

We Don’t Know the Culprit, and it Doesn’t Matter

As The Stream has reported, it’s uncertain whether the government of Syria in fact used chemical weapons against al Qaeda-linked Islamist rebels. Remember that in 2013, a U.N. official claimed that Syrian rebels were using captured chemical weapons against the government. Johannes de Jong, who is in close touch with Christian militias in Syria, told The Stream that the Turkish military has used chemical weapons against the Kurds near Aleppo — a fact which most media refused to cover. ISIS has used chemical weapons too. It seems that every major faction except the Kurds and their Christian allies has crossed the “red line” and used chemical weapons. So with whom should we side?

If Assad chose this moment to start using chemical weapons again, it was a political blunder of historic proportions. The U.S. had just agreed to set aside his removal from power as a precondition for peace. The “moderate rebels” whom neoconservatives fantasized would transform Syria into a liberal democracy with U.S. aid have turned out to be rarer than hen’s teeth. The weapons the U.S. gave them mostly ended up with al Qaeda factions.

Syria Needs Partition, Not U.S. Occupation

The possible outcomes in Syria have narrowed, and a tolerant, pro-American regime is not an option. It never really was one. Much more likely, and probably desirable, is a decentralized, de facto partitioned Syria. Crush ISIS, and let the rest of the country devolve into reasonably homogenous regions, according to who controls what today (minus, of course, ISIS).

One for Alawites and Christians, composed of the portion now controlled by Assad. (A good deal would require Assad himself to resign and go into exile, and replace him with an Alawite whose hands are comparatively clean of civilian blood.)

One for Arab Sunnis, composed of what’s controlled now by Turkey and its allies linked to al Qaeda.
One for Kurds, Christians, and Arabs opposed to al Qaeda, composed of what’s now controlled by the tolerant, democratically governed Federation of Northern Syria. (Turkey will fight this outcome, however — it opposes any territory for the Kurds, whose cousins it fiercely represses at home.)
There is no realistic prospect, even with Russian help and Trump in office, for Assad to reconquer the country. Nor could he hold it. So why would he do the one thing that would guarantee his ouster from power? Which might force Trump to break his campaign promise to keep U.S. forces out of the Syrian quagmire?

What If Assad Dropped Chemical Bombs?

But let’s allow that it’s possible, even likely that Assad’s forces were the culprit. Assad is a ham-fisted dictator, fighting desperately to protect his own power base and his ethnic group: the Alawites, a minority religious group that is persecuted in virtually every other Muslim country. So are Christians, who likewise are safe in the regions of Syria he still rules.

If we use force to knock out Assad and his government, who will fill the vacuum? The “moderate rebels” beloved of Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham can’t do it. They can’t even hold on to the weapons the U.S. gives them. The Turks won’t permit the Kurds and Syriac Christians to expand into that region. We won’t give it to ISIS.

So the most likely beneficiary of a U.S. attack on the Syrian government will be the powerful coalition of al Qaeda-linked radical Islamists, who are backed by Turkey and Saudi Arabia. If they take over the region with millions of Alawites and Christians, what will these jihadists do to them? Christians on the ground in Syria report that they were “cleansed” by these militias, whom they fear as much as ISIS. Indeed, the worldviews of al Qaeda and ISIS are not fundamentally different. As a native New Yorker who was present for 9/11, I am somehow biased against this outcome.

Should the U.S. Give al Qaeda a Country?

Do we want to send U.S. troops to Syria, which would likely put al Qaeda in control of a major country? To cause the ethnic cleansing of another million Christians, as we made possible in Iraq? To remove the last safe country for Christians in the region, apart from Israel? And all to accomplish what?

To salve our consciences? Because we read an article about an atrocity? Atrocities abound in the region, from the Saudis’ war on civilians in Yemen to the chaos still reigning in Libya after our last humanitarian intervention. Boosters of war always say that “inaction is not an option.” But if every likely or feasible course of action carries the risk of costing more lives and causing more chaos, prudent restraint isn’t just feasible. It’s the only moral option. (For more from the author of “Trump Must Not Repeat Iraq War Fiasco, Leave Al Qaeda in Control of Syria” please click HERE)

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Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s brutal dictatorship has been caught using illegal chemical weapons again.

The Trump administration has charged that the Assad regime was behind a toxic gas attack on Tuesday in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in northwestern Syria.

The death toll rose to 72 by Wednesday, including 20 children and 17 women. Videos from the scene showed victims convulsing, choking, and foaming from the mouth, symptoms often manifested by victims of nerve gas attacks.

A sarin gas attack launched by the Assad regime in August 2013 near Damascus killed more than 1,400 people and led President Barack Obama to declare that Assad had violated the “red line” that he had set against the use of chemical weapons.

But the Obama administration backed off after then-Secretary of State John Kerry brokered a last-minute deal with Moscow that called for the destruction of Assad’s chemical weapons stocks.

It has long been clear that the Obama administration accepted that face-saving deal proffered by Russia at a high cost to its own credibility and to U.S. national interests. Assad continued using chemical weapons with impunity. The United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons found that Syria’s government was responsible for at least three chlorine gas attacks in 2014 and 2015.

In January 2016, the same organization reported that blood samples extracted from victims of one attack indicated they had been exposed to a sarin or sarin-like nerve toxin.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday condemned the attack in a statement:

Today’s chemical attack in Syria against innocent people, including women and children, is reprehensible and cannot be ignored by the civilized world. These heinous actions by the Bashar al-Assad regime are a consequence of the past administration’s weakness and irresolution. President Obama said in 2012 that he would establish a “red line” against the use of chemical weapons and then did nothing. The United States stands with our allies across the globe to condemn this intolerable attack.

This statement is correct as far as it went, but the United States must do more than just condemn the attacks. It must drive up the diplomatic, political, economic, and potential military costs to the Assad regime of using illegal chemical weapons.

This means conducting a thorough investigation of the matter and holding regime officials accountable for any confirmed war crimes. Sanctions should be ratcheted up on the regime to penalize its unacceptable behavior.

Russia has vetoed seven U.N. Security Council resolutions calling for action against the Syrian regime, so the sanctions may need to be devised and applied outside the U.N. framework if Moscow again protects its odious client regime from the consequences of its crimes.

Russia’s diplomatic credibility, which has steadily declined under the duplicitous President Vladimir Putin, has been further undermined by the failure of the 2013 chemical weapons disarmament agreement that Moscow brokered.

Washington should balk at any further diplomatic understandings with Putin on Syria, until he has taken effective action to address the violations of the 2013 agreement. The Trump administration should not repeat its predecessor’s mistake of trusting Russia to enforce agreements.

The Trump administration appropriately has prioritized the military defeat of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, as its highest immediate priority in Syria. But reaching a political settlement to end the civil war and preventing ISIS from resurging are likely to be unreachable goals as long as Assad clings to power.

Although Assad’s departure does not need to be a short-term U.S. priority, it should be a long-term diplomatic priority if the administration expects to defeat ISIS, prevent it from making a comeback, reduce the carnage in Syria, and enable the return of more than 5 million Syrian refugees.

The Trump administration is unlikely to take direct military action against the Assad regime for its chemical attack, just as the Obama administration opted not to retaliate for repeated chemical attacks in 2014-2015.

The potential costs and risks of a direct military response are much higher after Russia’s September 2015 military intervention in Syria.

But the Trump administration can indirectly raise the military costs of Assad’s continued chemical aggression by providing greater aid to select Syrian rebel groups, who have no links to ISIS, al-Qaeda, and other Islamist terrorists or to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party.

The latest chemical attack launched by Assad’s ruthless regime is a reminder that if the Trump administration seeks to eradicate terrorism in Syria, then it cannot ignore the Syrian tyrant, who repeatedly has unleashed one of the most terrifying weapons against his own people. (For more from the author of “Assad Is Using Chemical Weapons. How Trump Can Counter the Barbarism.” please click HERE)

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