By this time, you surely know of the airstrikes on Syria. I shan’t regurgitate them. I’ll direct you to this link for the full 411 if you want it. As for opinion, the NY Times Editorial Board mostly drops their Trump Derangement Syndrome for a few minutes, though you have to wonder how it would have gone had France and England not been involved
President Trump has sometimes seemed to view military action as a game and foreign policy as something set by online taunts. He seemed to think that as commander in chief he could simply follow his whims.
The funny part is, this has mostly worked.
So it was reassuring that his military response to a suspected chemical attack that killed dozens of people in the rebel-held Damascus suburb of Douma on April 7 was coordinated with Britain and France. In his address to the nation Friday night, he said that preventing the use of chemical weapons was in the “vital national security interest of the United States.â€
Earlier this week we got his usual bluster. “Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and ‘smart,’†the president said on Twitter on Wednesday, in his best movie tough-guy impersonation, after a Russian diplomat warned that his nation’s forces would shoot down any missile fired at their ally Syria. On Friday night his message to the Syrian regime’s two main defenders, Russia and Iran, was more measured. “What kind of a nation wants to be associated with the mass murder of innocent men, women and children?†he asked. “The nations of the world can be judged by the friends they keep.â€
That’s Trump. This is who he is. He’s not a politician. He also doesn’t set red lines and then blatantly ignore the crossing of red lines.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said that while this was a “one-off†attack, like the airstrike against Syria a year ago, the targets were involved in the production and storage of chemical agents, not just an airfield. He warned of further attacks if Syria used chemical weapons again.
The attack in Douma was an outrage. Photos showed children foaming from their mouths and nostrils. The World Health Organization reported that 500 people in Douma had symptoms of exposure to chemical weapons, and many of those who died had signs of “highly toxic chemicals.â€
The thing is, you know that Democrats, and some Never Trump Republicans, are foaming at the mouth in outrage that Trump would do something like this, because they are deranged. They forget that Obama did the same thing (eventually), or excuse it. The Times does not. They do point out that this strike violates the UN charter and the Constitution, sort of.
Since then, President Barack Obama and now Mr. Trump have used those same authorizations at least 37 times to justify attacks on the Islamic State and other militant groups in 14 countries, including Yemen, the Philippines, Kenya, Eritrea and Niger, according to Dan Grazier of the Project on Government Oversight. This has allowed the Republican-led Congress to avoid public debate — and any responsibility for sending American men and women into battle.
This interpretation of the law gives a free hand to the volatile and thoughtless Mr. Trump, which could prove even more dangerous if he were to decide to attack North Korea or Iran.
First, we do need a new authorization, as the post September 11th one and the Iraq operations one do not really cover this, and, in all fairness, the NY Times had a problem with Obama ordering military strikes without a new one, though, also in all fairness, the barbs were aimed at the GOP controlled congress, not Obama. Supposedly, Senator Tim Kaine is going to offer up a new one.
It’s funny, though, that they call Trump volatile and thoughtless. They still just do not get Trump. They do not get why he won the election. And there’s no reason to explain it, because Liberals will never get it.
Anyhow, for a measured response, let’s go to CNN
https://twitter.com/WilliamTeach/status/984973525873299456
Their TDS has led them to take the side of North Korea, and they forget that the NKs have been developing nuclear weapons for decades, and set some off during Obama’s terms.
Our esteemed host quoted:
Kind of makes me wonder: if we knew that these ‘targets’ were involved in the production and storage of chemical weapons, why didn’t we take them out before the chemical weapons were used? It’s not like we haven’t struck Syria before for chemical weapon usage, so the precedent had already been set.
President Assad and his military have been killing people, including a lot of non-combatants, all along, with bullets and bombs; some 400,000 Syrians have supposedly been killed, another 5.5 million have fled the country, with 6.1 million internally displaced; the chemical attacks have killed and injured relatively few people, considering the number who have been blasted and burned to death by other means. How are those slain by chemical weapons any deader than the rest of them?
There are no good guys in the Syrian civil war. The only ‘solution’ is to let them fight it out, knowing that the eventual victor will still be so broke and so drained that he won’t have the time, energy or resources to spread international mischief.