I recognize that it’s very hard to do, but missing him might be more advantageous than actually getting him for the reasons you suggested. Assumedly he cares about himself, so knowing that we’ll target him directly when he orders chemical attacks would be something he might take into account.
There is no particular justification to respond only after a chemical attack. All attacks that target civilians are heinous, and have no other justification than ‘it will shorten the war, end the suffering’…Nagasaki…Hiroshima. Our political and military leaders are far from blameless in every conflict we have ever endured.
Can you imagine a prison riot with the addition of infants, children, and women? That is Syria today. It is a conflict that desperately needed to be stopped many years ago by a joint effort of the UN, cooperation between the US and Russia, Turkey, Iran and, even, Israel. a half million lives later, the war has only demonstrated the powerlessness and futility of the world to impose discipline upon malfeasants.
How can this end? Painfully. The UN must decide that Assad’s regime is over, that a new government, perhaps one with no Syrian participation in the short term, will be imposed. If Assad will not willingly leave, use whatever intelligence assets can be mustered to harass him out of the country. The military must surrender its command structure to the UN peace keeping forces.
Is this a perfect solution? Far from it, but it is the only way that stands any chance of ending large numbers of civilian casualties.
This was orchestrated from the start.
“Hey Vlad, my poll numbers are down. What can I do?”
“Worry not, my little придурок. I tell Assad gas his own people. You pretend outrage, throw some bombs in. People think you strong, they love you.”
So after shedding crocodile tears over the victims of the gas, Dolt 45 gets to look like an action hero.
Just a couple of years ago I would have read BobLibDem’s post above and silently chuckled at such a far-fetched conspiracist take on the situation. These days I’m more likely to think, “that sounds plausible”.
WTF happened to the world?
The 24 hour news cycle and opinions framed as “news” and “truth”. And social media outrage.
There’s actually a surprising amount of pushback amongst his die hards. Not that you still can’t be right; it wouldn’t surprise me for Trump to forget or disregard what his supporters think and want.
Assuming the chemical attack was authorised by the Assad regime this response from Trump is probably the minimal level Trump could get away with. So far it smacks of fairly typical gunboat diplomacy. Im not sure if this predictable response from the new Administration is a positive or negative.
Except it doesn’t really move poll numbers anymore. “We bombed somebody” isn’t nearly the story it was when Reagan ordered the bombing of Libya. That’s pretty much standard diplomacy for us since the Clinton years.
Agree on both counts.
Yeah, using chemical weapons is bad, and the world shouldn’t shrug its shoulders at it. But in the context of Assad’s war against his own people, only the ‘chemical weapons’ part stands out; the ‘killing lots of people, including children’ part doesn’t. So why now, indeed?
Unfortunately, the answer is clear: we’ve put our cable-TV-watching grandpa in charge of our armed forces, and this bit of cable news has caught grandpa’s attention. That’s all.
And Syria…there are no good guys and bad guys, just horrible guys and even worse guys. It’s a tragedy that this war wrecks the lives of ordinary people who just want to get on with making a living and raising their kids. But without god-like powers, there really isn’t much we can do for them.
All we can really do is drop bombs that will kill bad guys and noncombatants alike, and supply small arms to one group or another of bad guys that will just keep the fighting going longer.
There’s a lot of good the U.S. can accomplish in the world. But there’s a time to recognize our limitations as well. We can’t rescue the people of Syria, and there’s nothing constructive we can accomplish there. The same is almost certainly true of Yemen. Getting involved in these places serves no national interest that I can see. So let’s stay the hell out of there.
I agree with this. And once you start with this approach it tends to expand until you’re committed to getting involved everywhere.
The only bright side I can see is that it does send a message to those who might take on the US in small ways that the US has a lower threshold before lashing out than, and it might not be worthwhile to start something.
But on the whole, a negative in my books.
The missile launch is a predictable Trump tantrum. There was no threat to American security and no policy to be supported. Trump wanted an opportunity to act like the guys in the movies, so he pushed the button.
What argument can he make to the Congress: nothing that offends him will be tolerated? we have entered the Syrian conflict? Trump understands the situation?
Crane
I’m all for bombing Syria in response to the use of CW. But I think France should have done it this time. We always hog the glory!!
HRC just a couple days ago:
Did Putin call her, too? Unfortunately, this is pretty much mainstream US foreign policy. Obama was an aberration, and even he got sucked into more than he wanted.
Starting point: there are no right answers in Syria, only ones that may be less wrong.
I completely believe that Trump and Tillerson’s positioning beforehand emboldened the chemical attack but once it was done, what are the options?
In terms of actual “degradation” of Syrian capacity this does little and possibly costs us in treasure more than it cost them. But hitting fueling capacity and runways there minimizes that base’s utility and a few aircraft at least were likely destroyed.
If, as I read suggested, the point of the chemical attack was psychological warfare on his own population (“I can do anything and no one will help you.”) then this degrades that outcome. The population couldn’t miss this one.
It was a measured response that did not risk American lives and minimized the risk of escalation with Russia. It likely accomplished only a little and risked only a little (at significant dollar cost).
Might even have been the least wrong choice available.
Nixon infamously played the part of a person crazy enough to do anything and to be unpredictable. Trump I think really is crazy enough to do anything … on random occasion even the right thing, but who knows what happens next?
Whelp… at least there’ll be much less fake news about Trump/Russia ties for a while.
Mission accomplished, I’d say.
Hillary is just trying to play up her toughness for her next election run.
Hillary never seen a war she didn’t like.
But only if the President is a Democrat.
Eh. They all flip-flop once the get in office. Do you not remember Obama doing the exact same thing?
Apparently their positions “evolve” in that survival-of-the-fittest environment that is the Oval Office.
Nevertheless, he said it. And it helped him get elected.