Most of these Syrians—pleased though they say they are to see anything at all done to impede Assad’s killing machine—are not overly impressed by the implied distinction between slaughter by chemicals and slaughter by any other of the myriad means available to the regime and its partners.

Bahaa al-Halabi, a media activist currently based in Aleppo Province, put the point to The Daily Beast in starkly personal fashion: “My own father was martyred in an airstrike using internationally-banned cluster munitions,” he wrote in a WhatsApp message Monday. “Was my father’s death normal because it wasn’t due to chemicals?”

Describing the general mood among locals in his neighborhood, al-Halabi said, “Honestly, the people no longer believe any promises … when strikes begin in an intense way on Assad’s bases, and those of the terrorist militias that support him, there will be great joy among the people.”
Similarly, Abdulkafi Alhamdo, an Idlib-based former resident of East Aleppo, which the regime, Russia and Iran sacked two months ago, was interviewed by CNN last Friday. “What’s the benefit of such strikes?” he asked. “It’s a political message, yes. It’s a warning message, yes. But it’s really a popularity message. Trump is trying to have popularity with Americans by making these strikes…. But they didn’t achieve what Syrian civilians, what these innocent people, want.”