A survivor of a Syrian gas attack in 2013 now living in the U.S. as a refugee thanked President Donald Trump on Saturday for "showing true leadership and bravery" in Friday's strike on Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons operations.
"I feel happy," Kassem Eid, 32, who survived the 2013 attack that killed as many as 1,300 Syrians, told Ana Cabrera on CNN from Washington. "We all felt happy last night.
"We felt some kind of hope for the very first time in a long time about some kind of accountability."
"But," Eid added. "that happiness and joy soon vanished as soon as Gen. [James] Mattis started talking about this being a one-strike and how they only care about sending a message to Asaad to stop using chemical weapons."
Defense Secretary Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon late Friday that the strike, with French and British forces, was a "heavy" one-time strike in retaliation for Assad's chlorine gas attack on April 7 that killed as many as 70 people and injured 1,000 others.
"What I heard from Gen. Mattis was him literally telling Bashar al-Assad: You can keep on killing as many Syrians as you can," Eid told Cabrera.
"You can keep burning people alive and dropping barrel bombs over cities, but don't use chemical weapons, because it will make us look bad."
Eid, who escaped Syria through Lebanon in 2013, told Cabrera that he would love to buy President Trump "a beer and just sit in front of you and tell you how bad it is in Syria."
"I'm a Syrian refugee who survived chemical weapons attacks," he said. "Who lived under two years of siege and bombardment by the government."
He said he would encourage Trump to "listen to your heart, not listen to your generals.
"You proved once again yesterday that you have a big heart—at least a lot bigger than [President Barack] Obama, because you actually tried to do something.
"We need real long-term commitment to bring peace to Syria," he said. "We need to hold war criminals accountable.
"Otherwise, we will only help creating ISIS 2.0, who will come out and say they don't care about you.
"We're the only ones who want to fight Asaad."
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