Perhaps this was all theater?

I don't see how it can be anything other than political theater.

This attack on Syria is a 180 reversal for Trump from his previous position. Back when Obama drew his line in the sand, Trump was the first to criticize, saying we shouldn't get involved in Syria and any attack should require Congressional approval. And now he's lobbing 60 missiles without asking the Congress. Just the exact opposite of what he campaigned on.

The problem is that there is no valid reason for this reversal.

He says Assad crossed "many many lines", but that's BS. Assad has been using chemical weapons for as long as the Syrian civil war has been raging on.

He worries about the "beautiful babies" in Syria, but that's BS too. Where was his humanitarian concern when he banned Syrian refugees from seeking asylum in the US?

The only reason he engaged in this attack is because it's a convenient domestic distraction away from the Russia collusion story. He gets to pretend like he did something Russia wouldn't like by attacking Assad, and gives the US media something new to discuss that isn't a damaging scandal.

Except of course now we're finding out from multiple sources that Syria seems to have had forewarning of the attack, that Russia may have been told about it before our own diplomats.

This seems disconnected, but it really is just another page in the Russia collusion book. It's all part of the same story, and it's going to be a helluva story for the ages once we finally get the whole truth out eventually.