(CNN) President Donald Trump surprised many Thursday night when he ordered the launch of Tomahawk missiles against a Syrian airfield. The narrative is fairly straightforward: Shayrat airfield was allegedly used by Syrian government forces to strike the civilian population south of Idlib with sarin nerve gas. The chemical weapons attack, one in a pattern of such attacks by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime, took place under the nose of Russian forces, which may have been aware of the nature of the attack. There are a variety of questions the Shayrat strike raises, not least among them the political questions about Trump's own decision-making. ISIS, al Qaeda and a variety of other nasties were the greatest beneficiaries of Western indifference and now control major swathes of Syria.

Source: CNN April 07, 2017 15:50 UTC