To attack or not to attack — that is no longer the question. US President Barack Obama, despite the opposition of public opinion in his country, is obliged to launch an attack in Syria because Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has long since crossed Obama’s unequivocal red line. One chemical attack in a Damascus suburb has shocked the world much more than the 100,000 people who have fallen in the bloody Syrian battlefield to date.

The fundamental question to be asked now is: What does the United States intend to achieve by a military strike? Does it have an objective other than showing that Obama is a man of his word? An American assault might be limited to a single blow. Or it might consist of a series of assaults on strategic targets such as a chemical weapons factory, arms depots or even an assault on the presidential palace in Damascus in order to deter Assad. The result in any case will follow accordingly. Assad will emerge from his hideout to announce to whatever is left of his nation that he will not yield to predatory American imperialism on Syrian land.

Under such circumstances it is very likely that Israel’s name will also find its way onto the list of those who connive against Assad, those who try to divide and destroy his country. Several days after such an assault, hundreds of thousands of Syrians will conduct demonstrations in support of their leader. They will protest the fact that the Americans and their partners join hands with the rebels to oust their president, who is fighting for his life and for the liberty of his country.

Such an assault will not achieve a thing. Syrian citizens — those not involved in the fighting and who do not live at the sites of Syrian army battles and war crimes — will unite around their president. This is a well-known phenomenon during times of crisis: Civilians put aside inner tensions and dissent to unite against a common external enemy. We can also assume that a large portion of Syria’s citizens who viewed the harsh pictures from the chemical attack are convinced that it was nothing short of fraudulent propaganda on the part of the rebels.