Radio Pundit Openly Weeps Over Syria Airstrikes

Pundits are calling the latest airstrike in Syria everything from "a restrained operation" to a risky move that could throw the US into "a cycle of escalation" in the Syrian conflict. Supporters of President Trump from Fox News and other conservative outlets were surprisingly negative, with Infowars' Alex Jones hating it so much he broke down crying and said, "It makes me sick." From around the Web:

• A deterrence: "The one-night burst of ordnance appears unlikely to change the overall balance of forces in Syria seven years into its bloody civil war," write Peter Baker and Rick Gladstone in the New York Times. "But the president hoped it would be enough to deter Mr. Assad from using chemical weapons again without being so damaging as to compel Russia and Iran to intervene."

• Possible retaliation: Some analysts are pointing out "the risk" of America getting "more deeply in the Syrian conflict than the administration intended," writes Paul Sonne at the Washington Post. He quotes retired US Army Lt. Gen. James Dubik, who warns that Russia or Iran—supporters of Assad's regime—might retaliate. "Then what do we do?" asks Dubik.

• Limited gains: Yet Washington did let Russian air force commanders know which air space the US and its allies would use, lowering the risk of escalation, write Michael Gordon and Dion Nissenbaum at the Wall Street Journal. "The effort to avoid a clash with Russian forces appeared to succeed," they note. "Still, the limited nature of the military intervention is likely to yield only limited gains" in Syria.

• Assad remains at large: Top Al Jazeera political analyst Marwan Bishara echoed that note in a harsher manner, calling the attack "almost pinprick strikes toward three [chemical weapons] facilities." He says that Assad, "the man responsible ... for the death of half a million [Syrians] remains at large" and suggests that President Trump used the strikes to defer attention from "his Stormy Daniels crisis and his issue with his lawyers."

• Openly weeping: Conservative media pundits aren't taking kindly to the airstrikes, the Hill reports, with Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham questioning them, Michael Savage tweeting about "sad warmongers hijacking our nation," and Alex Jones shedding tears. "If he had been a piece of crap from the beginning, it wouldn’t be so bad," says Jones of the president. "We’ve made so many sacrifices and now he’s crapping all over us. It makes me sick."

(More Syria stories.)