As war-cries go, "There are no good options" leaves something to be desired. But punishing the Syrian regime for the chemical attack on August 21st is not easy to get right. The response must be big enough to be taken seriously, in Syria and elsewhere-no one wants a repeat of the desultory and misguided attack on a Sudanese drug factory in 1998-if it is to have the desired effect. At the same time it must not be seen as making the attackers party to the war the regime is fighting, or escalating the conflict across the region. Such calibration may be too fine a task to achieve with the blunt instruments of war.
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