Clanricarde rules

One of the suggested reasons for bombing Syria is to punish the regime; which seems to face the problem so perceptively pointed out by Lord Clanricarde (second marquess, fifteenth earl) around 1880.

With the rise of [Irish] land agitation after the bad harvests of 1879, [his] unyielding attitude, coupled with his unsociable personality and his position as the stereotypical absentee landlord .... made him a major target; his financial resources enabled him to resist effectively. His obduracy brought him into conflict even with some of his land agents; he is alleged to have told one: ‘If my tenants think they can intimidate me by shooting you, they are very much mistaken’.

Assad is, I'm sure, able to take the deaths of any number of his soldiers, public servants, and citizens with an appropriately philosophical stoicism.