Is any American reaction called for in Syria after the chemical attack

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I began to get the point of international relations in a management development course when the instructor said to replace any instance of “trust” in our dealings with others, with “predictability” as the operative term.

This is a corollary to the fact that business ethics, which international relations is (especially now) is measured in a different dimension than interpersonal morality. Napalm burning on the skin and chlorine burning in the lungs is collateral damage, if not the point of industrial-scale terrorism.

Whoever used chlorine gas in Syria is playing the game of predictability, and at this juncture they are betting on how Trump, aka the USA, will react.

Originally posted by @stevemcc
Only if the US want to be taken seriously when they assert that chemical weapons are unacceptable. Therefore, I say yes

No.
Not the yanks.
Everything they’ve touched the last 55 years has turned into an international disaster and only made things worse.

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I’m pretty certain the Captain responsible received a meddle for bravery as well.

Yeah, pretty much sums up the US.

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No US sailor received decorations or promotions for the shooting down of Flight 655. Having seen video of the USS Vincennes' CIC directly after the incident, I can attest that those on board were horrified when they realized they had shot down a civilian airliner.

The incident was partially a result of over-aggressiveness' by the Captain of the Vincennes but mostly a result of human and system errors as outlined in this report: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/aeronautics-and-astronautics/16-422-human-supervisory-control-of-automated-systems-spring-2004/projects/vincennes.pdf

At 6:33 local time, acting without any orders from his superiors, Capt Rogers orders “all ahead flank” and proceeds from about here (point to map) 50 miles northeast (point again) to where the USS Montgomery had reportedly sighted 13 Iranian speedboats in an attempt to get involved in the action. After some explosions are heard, the command center in Bahrain orders Capt Rogers to stay south, but to send his helicopter north on a reconnaissance mission. At 8:40 however, Capt is startled to see that the Vincennes was almost on top of the Omani peninsula, about 40 miles north of where she was supposed to be. Angry, McKenna orders Rogers back to Abu Musa. Unfortunately, Rogers leaves his helicopter behind, whose pilot, Lt Mark Collier, decides to follow the speedboats as they retreat north towards Iran at 8:45. The helicopter eventually takes some fire, and the Vincennes jumps back into the fray. Heading towards the majority of the speedboats,
he is unable to get a clear target. Also, the speedboats are now just slowly milling about in their own territorial waters. Despite clear information to the contrary, Rogers informs co
mmand that the gunboats are gathering speed and showing hostile intent and gains approval to fire upon them at 0939. Finally, in another fateful decision, he crosses the 12-mile limit off the coast and enters illegally into Iranian waters, which will prove to have far-reaching implications. At this point, Capt Rogers and the USS Vincennes had just set themselves up for a very bad situation.
Also, for future reference, this (point) is the airport from which Flight 655 departed, and this (point) is the airport to which they were headed. As you can see, the USS Vincennes lay directly in the airplane’s path

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The majority of the crew members on board the USS Vincennes that day had created an erroneous expectancy of what was happening. This was partially caused by fresh memories of the USS Stark, which was severely damaged a year earlier by an Iraqi fighter jet. Many psychologists call this concept scenario fulfillment. Iran Flight 655 took off from the joint civilian/military airport at Bandar Abbas at about 10:17. As it was climbing to its cruising altitude, five crew members in the CIC on the Vincennes independently believed that the incoming aircraft was descending and
picking up speed. Anonymous shouts and warnings created a very tense atmosphere in the CIC. Capt Rogers and other officers paid more attention to the shouts, warnings, and emergency signals than to the actual displays and print outs of the Aegis system, which, if carefully analyzed, would have easily shown that the incoming aircraft was a com
mercial airplane and was in fact simply climbing to its cruising altitude. Probably a very significant factor in all of this was the stress, tension, lack of time, and fog and friction of war. Flight 655 was detected by radar at 10:17
and was shot down 7 minutes later at 10:24, when it came within 10 miles of the Vincennes. 7 minutes is a short time to make such a critical decision, especially with all that was goin on at the time in the CIC.

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And to tell you about what was going on, I would like to talk about the deficiencies of the system itself. And by system, I don’t simply mean the Aegis computer. I mean the complete interaction between man and machine. A little bit of the Human Centered System Approach would have gone a long way in this case. First, the Aegis cruisers were not designed for small-craft battles in the enclosed areas like the Persian Gulf. Instead, they were designed for all-out battles in the open sea with the Soviet Union. So that was a problem, especially when trying to track and fire upon those annoying little speedboats. The CIC also provided no actual view, no actual video, of the area and the situation outside. Dials and displays are nice, but it is also helpful to bring some
reality to the area where the decisions are made. The CIC was also very dark, and the few lights it did have flickered every time the Vincennes fired at the speedboats. This was of special concern to Petty Officer Andrew Anderson, who first picked up Flight 655 on radar and thought it might be a commercial aircraft. As he was searching in the navy’s listing of commercial flights, he apparently missed Flight 655 because it was so dark. There was a great deal of electronic and verbal confusion in the CIC as well. Capt Rogers and his key commanders where linked on a certain communications circuit. However, over half of the crew on the Vincennes had figured out a way to “tap into” the circuit to listen to everything that was going on. This drained the power on the
circuit and forced some Lt to switch the frequency every now and then and call out “switch!” as loudly as he could while doing it. One problem that could have prevented the entire disaster alsohad to with Petty Officer Anderson. The first time he had beamed out his IFF query to the departing airplane, he had received back the signature of a com
mercial airplane. However, after someone had shouted out that it could be an F-14, Anderson used his IFF again, but this time received back the signature of a military airplane. Investigators later figured out that Anderson had forgotten to reset the range on the IFF device that he used and was actually getting back the signature of a military airplane on the ground in the Bandar Abbas airport, which begs the question:
Why on earth should he have had to manually switch the range on his IFF device? Why couldn’t it automatically switch itself? Nevertheless, that occurred, and then one of the forward guns jammed, and in an attempt to turn the ship around, the rapid movement forced all of the papers, books, and charts in the CIC to go flying off the tables. Two final comments about the system: the radar displays violated the Proximity Compatibility Principle. One device displaying the airplane’s location was in a completely separate place from the device that described the plane’s vertical
action, adding to the confusion and errors. Finally, it was discovered that although the Aegis system can track several hundred objects in the air, it reuses its tracking numbers and can sometimes switch the tracking numbers of planes without any warning, which is what might have happened to the Vincennes according to a 2001 report by C. W. Fisher.

In short, there were multiple mistakes and system deficiencies but I don't think it's fair to suggest the crew callously shot down a civilian airliner.

Originally posted by @no1marauder
The US has already reacted by condemning Assad and everybody who supports him.

Do you mean war? With whom exactly?

I personally would prefer independent fact finding to determine if such an attack took place. It would seem a senseless thing for the Syrian government to do at this time, but I'm open to evidence.

I certainly mean more than a condemnation. I am thinking of a military strike sufficiently forceful that Assad and Putin get the idea.
The thread has produced the shedding of tears and gnashing of teeth all having to do with the horribleness of America, which argument we have all heard a million times and which is not without merit.
If some other entity wants to make it clear to Assad et al that chemical weapons use comes with an extravagant cost, I'm all for it. Don't hold your breath waiting for England or France or Russia or Iran or the UN to do this.
Our interlocutors in the thread do not register an objection to Assad's use of these weapons. Does that default into approval? Close enough for this reader.
I do respect your call for evidence given you are skeptical.
I believe such an attack took place here and has taken place before. I believe that Obama, whom I like, make a gross mistake, in drawing a red line and having his bluff called.
I think that only the United States can demonstrate to Assad that he has no choice but to abandon this strategy. I think they should deliver a cost he will find utterly unmanageable
and I don't think in the face of this that Russia or anyone else is going to think that Assad is worth this risk. If the message is clear enough, they will read it correctly.

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Morality is, in international affairs, an utterly empty concept. People who refer to it do not understand much. I make no reference to moral principle at all beyond the rejection of chemical weapons. Don't put your utterly empty words into my mouth.
That you have noticed no writer expressing approval of Assad's use of chemical weapons only highlights your favorite complaint against those who dare disagree with you, that your reading comprehension skills are non-existent.
I grant you the intelligence not to say you approve of this use. You are not perfectly stupid. It is your failure to condemn that reveals you for what you are. And you do decline to condemn unless it is the US that you can condemn.
Perhaps you think that goes unnoticed.
Lets go to your pragmatic considerations, since you have no better argument.
I am perfectly prepared to kill Russians if need be. As many as it takes. Which in no way separates me from the Russian gambit in Syria.
Putin would love weak asses like you to believe that he will never say "I give up"
You do his bluffing job for him.
Tell him once that you will go to the mat with him and watch how he behaves.
Fail to provide some resistance and you will see the chemical war escalate.
You live in a world more real than you are. Grow a pair.

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They were not awarded such decorations for the shooting down of the AirBus as you claimed as the Wiki article makes clear. Rogers was not punished as he should have been, but he surely would have got the Legion of Merit anyway (there is zero indication that the shoot down helped him get it):

Despite the mistakes made in the downing of the plane, the men of the Vincennes were awarded Combat Action Ribbons for completion of their tours in a combat zone. The air-warfare coordinator on duty received the Navy Commendation Medal,[11] but The Washington Post reported in 1990 that the awards were for his entire tour from 1984 to 1988 and for his actions relating to the surface engagement with Iranian gunboats.[56] In 1990, Rogers was awarded the Legion of Merit "for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service as commanding officer ... from April 1987 to May 1989." The award was given for his service as the commanding officer of the Vincennes from April 1987 to May 1989. The citation made no mention of the downing of Iran Air 655.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655#cite_note-ICJ-Aerial-Incident-30

Captain Rogers was left in command of the Vincennes for only another 10 months and never commanded another ship. He got a desk job and then "retired" from the Navy a few years later at the age of 52.

Yes, the top brass and politicians made false statements in the immediate aftermath but the true story came out reasonably quickly. A US apology to Iran would have been politically suicidal in the 1980s and 1990s but the US did accept ICJ jurisdiction and did pay out $131 million in damages, hardly the acts of a country that truly believed the shooting down of the civilian airliner was justified.