President Trump, in a coalition with Britain and France, recently launched a series of missiles against several government sites in Syria connected to the country’s chemical weapons program. The strike was supposedly done in retaliation to an earlier chemical attack that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad launched on his own citizens.

However, it simply does not make logical sense to attempt to tell someone to stop attacking their civilians by endangering their civilians even further. While all of the missiles were ostensibly targeted solely at government sites, there are stories every month about missile misfires accidentally hitting schools or hospitals or residential zones. Even if we are not intentionally killing civilians with these strikes, every missile fired jeopardizes Syrian citizens, and it is not right to state that jeopardizing Syrian citizens is the way to prevent the Syrian government from killing civilians. If an enemy of ours sent a missile strike at California but only targeted military bases, how much cold comfort would that be?

In a perfect world in which no missile would ever fly off track and collateral damage was a non-concern, perhaps the attacks would be easier to justify. But regardless of whether or not proper congressional channels were followed, the attacks themselves and the reasoning behind them do not morally hold up.