The U.S. does nothing: Innocent people continue to die
The U.S. does something: Innocent people die (It is war, after all)
Whats worse, is what'll happen when one of the strikes inadvertently hits some of Russia's troops?
Whats the solution to all this?
Maybe get all the parties to the fighting to get serious, sit down, shut up, listen up, and make a deal.
For the first part, the "get serious", have some bombs wake them up and get their attention.
Or may want a BATNA -- best alternative to a negotiated agreement -- to be much worse than so far. Or, call it making the parties motivated.
Or, maybe the attack with the 50+ cruise missiles was to "make an example".
Why try to make the parties more motivated -- could that help? Well, easily enough, there are enough people among the parties who are willing to have that several sided civil war continue at the current level of bloodshed for a long time. But, maybe by making the war more costly to selected parties, can get a deal.
I don't know enough of the details to have any idea if any of the above would be realistic, feasible, correct, etc. Instead, I'm just floating some of what might be part of the situation. Or as General Mattis explained, a war is not over until the enemy says it is -- the enemy also gets a vote. So, for a war to be over, all the sides need to be motivated to agree it should be over.
The problem has never been the war, the problem is that "Assad must go". For the strategies and gains of the US and a number of its allies. Any excuse and any false flag will do, and any amount of victims is acceptable to this end.
Like, coordinating coups and dropping bombs over and over again tends to have that effect.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-cr...
And the US had been covertly funding the opposition for at least 5 years before the war erupted:
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/terrorism-security/2011/0418/...