WASHINGTON—The city was quiet, wrapped in a stubborn spring rain on Thursday night, when the president* made war in a place for the very first time. The lobby of the Trump International Hotel began to buzz just a bit around 8:30 p.m., when word got around that two cruisers of the United States Navy had launched more than 50 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airfield from which, it was believed, the ghastly chemical weapon attack on the village of Khan Sheikoun had been launched. From The NewYork Times:

"Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the air base in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched," Mr. Trump said in remarks at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. "It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons."

And, in the aftermath, we have begun to hear again that the president* was moved to being presidential again, the way he was when he read a speech to Congress without spraining his tongue. He was "decisive." His tone had "changed." There is such a great desire to validate this guy in the office that is supposed to validate him simply by the fact that he holds it that a lot of the people commenting on the actions taken Thursday night simply forgot that it probably was nakedly illegal. However, Senator Tim Kaine, who's been trying to beat a new Authorization for the Use of Military Force out of Congress for four years, remained on the case.

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President waging military action against Syria without a vote of Congress? Unconstitutional. — Tim Kaine (@timkaine) April 7, 2017

This, of course, will mean nothing to anybody. The drums are already beating. John McCain was on the electric teevee machine on Thursday proposing that we not only overthrow Bashar al Assad and his regime, but rebuild Syria. He used as his example how we rebuilt Europe after World War II. This is, of course, crazy. Nobody in the region would stand for that, not after our bungled monstrosity in Iraq. Constitutional niceties in this regard went out the window decades ago.

As policy, beyond snapping back at Assad for the war crime he committed earlier this week, I don't see how this makes much of any sense. We learned a new word Thursday night—"deconfliction"—which is fairly defined as, "Blow shit up without killing any Russians because that could be a problem." I love the new jargon that comes along every time we decide to make war in a place. So it's unlikely that we will be involved in a shooting war with Russia, which is a good thing.

But I get a cold chill any time somebody tells me that we needed to fire off a few hundred thousand pounds of explosives to demonstrate something to somebody. On Thursday night, phantom Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and National Security Adviser H.R.McMaster were fairly clear that these strikes wouldn't have any effect on the actual political situation in Syria. The president* has made war in a place for the first time. That's all we're sure of as another day dawns in Washington, where the war is made but rarely has any impact at all.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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