Trump Should Draw a Real Red Line in Syria

If the war in Syria is this century’s Spanish Civil War, then the carnage now occurring in Eastern Ghouta is a modern-day Guernica. Yet this may be a situation, unlike in 1937, where the world is in a position to do something about it.

According to human-rights groups, more than 12,000 civilians have died in the area of 400,000 just east of Damascus since fighting began in 2011. As the Syrian government has ramped up operations over the last two weeks, more than 500 people have been killed by air and artillery strikes. And, if reports from international aid workers are correct, Bashar al-Assad’s regime has added chlorine gas to its arsenal of barbaric weapons, alongside barrel bombs and cluster munitions. If so, this is a violation of both the laws of war and human decency.