Sunday, April 9, 2017
Trump Flirts With Infamy
On Thursday, April 6, 2017, Donald Trump ordered the US Navy to
fire 59 cruise missiles from ships in the Mediterranean targeting
the al-Shayrat airbase in central Syria (near Homs). This was widely
reported as the first time US forces had directly attacked forces
loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad. My first reaction to write
up another
Day of Infamy post, like
I did the day after March 17, 2003, when Bush launched his invasion
and occupation of Iraq with a similar volley of cruise missiles.
But since those missiles blew up on or near their target, the US
hasn't followed up with an invasion or any notable escalation of
war. It's not even much of a precedent, as the US has been bombing
Syrian territory held by ISIS for several years, and has stationed
"military advisers" ("special forces") well inside Syria's pre-war
borders. And the US and its nominal allies have been running guns
and munitions to various anti-Assad groups within Syria almost from
the very start of Syria's Civil War. Obama had gone on record as
insisting that Assad "must go" early in that war -- an extraordinarily
arrogant stance coming from the leader of a nation which used to
proclaim its belief that each nation has a right to choose its own
leaders and political system ("self-determination").
The US has had a checkered relationship with Syria and the Assad
dynasty since it seized power in the mid-1960s, sometimes forming
alliances against common enemies (like Iraq and al-Qaeda), but one
issue has effectively kept Syria on the US enemies list and that is
Israel -- especially since 1967 when Isreal seized and annexed a
strip of territory it calls the Golan Heights. That issue pushed
Syria into becoming a military client of the Soviet Union (later
Russia -- in neither case for ideological reasons, but because its
opposition to Israel closed off access to American arms), and that
alignment only (plus the similar one with Iran) only added to the
peculiar combination of antipathy, indifference, opportunism, and
intolerance which has characterized America's increasingly violent
and fitful intervention in the Middle East.
The immediate rationale for this particular act of war was the
use of poisonous gas, allegedly by Assad's forces, in the town of
Khan Sheikhoun, in "rebel-held territory" in Idlib Province. Obama
had arbitrariy proclaimed a "red line" that would be crossed should
Syria use poison gas. When Syria appeared to have used poison gas in
2013, the US prepared a "punitive" attack against Syria, but backed
down, partly because Congress was wary of authorizing US intervention
in Syria, but also because Russia intervened and negotiated a deal
between Assad and Kerry committing Syria to destroy its stocks of
chemical weapons. Although few Republicans wanted to intervene in
Syria, neocons were critical of Obama for failing to punish Syria,
and Trump picked up that theme on the campaign trail. Given a similar
provocation, it's hardly surprising that Trump would want to show his
toughness by bombing first -- especially given that the US had a long
history, dating back to Reagan in Libya, of punitive bombing against
Middle Eastern targets. (Clinton did the same in Afghanistan and Sudan,
and turned the pummeling of Iraq into a kneejerk response every time
he wanted to deflect attention from his own scandals. Trump understood
this political tactic well enough to tweet (not sure when): "Now that
Obama's poll numbers are in tailspin -- watch for him to launch a
strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate.")
But while Trump's now-signature attack isn't far removed from
"business as usual" for the US in the region, it will take some
effort to various threads that came together to make Trump's own
decision little more than a kneejerk response. One question has
to do with the chemical attack cited as the rationale. It's hard
to get politically untainted data from the site, but it makes
little if any sense that Assad would use chemical weapons after
having given them up. As
Jason Diltz reports, one possible explanation, promoted by Russia,
is "that no such gas attack took place to begin with, and that a Syrian
conventional strike hit a rebel warehouse full of chemicals." Russia,
having brokered the deal to rid Assad of chemical weapons, isn't a
disinterested observer here, but it is likely that chemical weapons
caches fell into "rebel" hands early in the war, and there has been
reason to suggest that some of the pre-2013 poison gas incidents had
been "false flag" operations by "rebels" to goad the US into taking
punitive action against Assad.
More generally, Assad has evidently been gaining ground recently,
and several countries had come to the conclusion that Assad would
continue to play a role in a negotiated post-conflict Syria -- even
the US seemed to be moving toward that conclusion, at least as part
of Trump's more amicable stance toward Russia. So why would Assad
risk all that by doing something practically guaranteed to trigger
a belligerent response from Trump? It makes no sense -- which doesn't
prove it's untrue but does raise suspicion. If you look at who benefits
from the chemical attack, it isn't Assad or his foreign allies; it's the
anti-Assad "rebels" and elements within the US security establishment
who have long benefited from sowing discord with Russia and Iran;
e.g., the very people who applauded Trump loudest. Diltz also reports
that
the Pentagon is investigating whether Russian planes took part in
the chemical attack, and that Rex Tillerson says
Russia bears responsibility for Assad's gas attack. Strategic
thinkers in and around the Pentagon have long cherished Russia as
an enemy.
The key thing in Trump's attack against the Syrian airfield wasn't
what he did so much as how quickly he did it. Speed saved Trump from
a lot of possible headaches: he never had to explain what he intended
to do, and he didn't give anyone the chance to second-guess him, let
alone organize opposition. He didn't consult anyone in Congress. Despite
Nikki Haley's recent flurry of tantrums, he didn't engage the UN. What
he wanted to do was to show that he could act decisively (unlike Obama,
or even Bush, but ironically much more like Clinton). He informed the
president of China only after the missiles were launched, and only
because they were having dinner together and he was too pleased with
himself to keep a secret like that. About the only one he did as much
as notify before the fact was the Russians, who were given ample time
to clear the air base, minimizing damage and casualties. (Press reports
stated that the 59 cruise missiles -- at $1.5 million each he liquidated
$90 million in inventory in seconds -- had killed nine Syrians.) You'd
think that hardcore Trump-Russia conspiracy devotees would be up in
arms over such collusion, but most of them are Clinton dead-enders,
and by and large they were so elated by the fireworks they let such
details pass.
So even if you've forgotten the movie Wag the Dog, it was
pretty obvious that the chief objective in bombing Syria had to do
with domestic politics. Trump has been struggling in the polls, and
he's especially been dogged by charges of underhanded hanky-panky with
Vladimir Putin and the Russians -- whose interference in America's
notoriously corrupt political system is popularly regarded as nefarious
(as opposed to, say, Israel's completely kosher manipulations). So in
one stealth blow, Trump shows his independence from Putin as well as
his allegiance to the imperial war state, and gets a moment doing the
one thing Americans of most political stripes seem to regard as truly
"presidential": blowing shit up. And to think that until he did just
that, Trump was widely regarded as a dangerous maniac.
Conspicuous among those applauding Trump were not only perennial
Republican war-mongers like John McCain and Lindsey Graham, but
virtually all of the so-called opposition leadership, starting with
Chuck Shumer ("the right thing to do") and Nancy Pelosi. Even former
presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton came in from the woods to, just
before the fact, demand that Trump step up to the challenge and bomb
Syria's airfields. (Anyone who thought that Trump might be less
hawkish than Clinton has by now been thoroughly disabused of such
fantasies, but thus far Trump still hasn't done anything crazier
than Clinton herself promised.) Even John Kerry, who negotiated the
chemical weapons deal with Assad and Putin, has turned into one of
Trump's loudest cheerleaders.
Still, the speed with which Trump acted belies the likely fact
that he actually has no idea how to end the war. When someone like
Kerry looks at Trump's escalation, he sees pressure pointed toward
a negotiated settlement, and he sees bombing Assad now as a means
of bringing his ambitions down a notch or two. He no doubt recalls
Bosnia, where a round of American bombing brought the Serbs to an
agreement known as the Dayton Accords. But that was a relatively
simple and easy conflict, and the US had virtually no history as a
nemesis to Serbia (or Yugoslavia) so had a relatively clean track
record as an arbiter. Yugoslavia was also a country that could be
sliced up into fairly neat regions, so the outlines of a solution
were much more obvious. Also there was very little international
involvement, so other countries (even the US) had no real stakes
in the outcome. Even so, the Dayton Accords were hardly a model of
impartial diplomacy: they halted a war, but didn't repair the ruins,
and war soon flared up again in Kosovo, which was resolved far less
elegantly.
Anyone who gives Syria even a modicum of thought must realize that
the only way the war ends there is in an agreement which shares power
among all factions. That is especially difficult because there are so
many factions, many defined against each other, and many backed by
various foreign powers, few (if any) out of any concern for the people
who live (or, increasingly, lived) in Syria. The only way to cut through
this Gordian Knot is to systematically focus on what would be best for
the people, regardless of what it means for the outside parties -- but
that is a skill that Americans in particular have great difficulty with.
Some aspects of a solution seem fundamental. First, power should be
radically decentralized, with each section determined democratically,
and much flexibility as to how to organize each section. (This is what
should have been done in Aghanistan and Iraq, but wasn't because the
US wanted to control local politics through the apparatus of a central
state, no matter how alien or unpopular that state became.) This would
allow, for instance, some sections to be popularly organized as Islamist
statelets, others to be dominated by Sunnis or Alawis or Kurds, and
others to favor secular socialism (or even Texas-style crony capitalism,
Bush's initial plan for Iraq). Those local sections would need to be
demilitarized, and to allow free movement of people to other sections.
There would need to be a comprehensive amnesty, and limits on punishment
inside sections (some sort of "bill of rights," where mobility was one
such right).
Such an agreement could be agreed to or imposed, and indeed a broadly
agreed to framework might have to be imposed on recalcitrant factions.
If imposed, it should be done by neutral soldiers who have no lasting
political interests in Syria, and should involve disarmament. An agreed
framework could slowtrack disarmament. The settlement would gradually
remove all foreign forces, and provide an international agreement against
aggression against Syria (Israel and Turkey are two countries with bad
track records here). It would also come with a redevelopment bank that
would provide grants and loans for rebuilding and development, and would
be subject to policing of corruption.
I don't see how any other solution might work, although I can imagine
various half-assed compromises, like leaving Assad in charge of a rump
Syrian state that would be prohibited from infringing the basic rights
of the Syrian people, with vague promises of future elections, etc. --
you might call this "surrender with dignity." Or if you cannot condone
Assad, you might conspire to turn the country over to Al-Qaeda and hope
they evolve into Saudi Arabia. Or I suppose the world powers might get
Turkey to occupy and annex Syria, although there's no reason to think
they'd do a better job than they have in their Kurdish regions. But
none of these are remotely good ideas. They're merely better than
maintaining Syria as a hot battleground for the cold wars of a dozen
regional and international rivals -- i.e., the status quo.
While Kerry might relish the prospect of using the Trump stick to
bully Assad and others to a Bosnia-like settlement (or better), it's
hard to see Rex Tillerson (let alone Trump) even imagining as much,
much less accomplishing it having basically decapitated the State
Department (he, of course, in the role of the chicken's disembodied
head). Ironically, the only one involved who possesses anything near
that sort of imagination is Putin, so wouldn't a plan designed to
drive a wedge between Putin and Trump be counterproductive? That's
pretty clearly why McCain and Graham, and for that matter Shumer and
Pelosi and Clinton and her crew, were so quick to climb on board.
Still, without a plan this will go down in history as just another
arbitrary and ultimately pointless American atrocity, like so many
before it, and Trump's blip in the polls will dissolve into the hole
dug by his nasty incompetence. His day of infamy is likely to quickly
be forgotten, until his next one anyway. It's not just that those who
are ignorant of history are condemned to repeat it. Those who respond
only to the moment's temptation will never have firm ground to stand
on.
One last point I want to make: what disturbs me more than Trump's
missile attack has been how easily, how uncritically many Democrats
and most of the media have lapped up the rationale behind the attack.
OK, whatever rationale suited their prejudices best -- some exalted
in American power and Trump's "presidential" resolve, some preferred
to play up the vileness of the "enemy," some even believed that the
killing and destruction served some humanitarian greater good. But
all of them bought into the idea that the US (and the US alone) is
entitled to play God and deliver justice. Back in 2008 when Barack
Obama said he wants to change the way we think about war, nobody
expected that what he meant was that the US should simply become
more efficient and precise in its ability to project power across
the globe, especially through riskless, remotely controlled long
distance weapons. Surely a more reasonable reading would have been
that the US should back away from its world policing role in favor
of developing international organizations that could keep the peace
by putting all nations on an equal footing.
Of course, no one expects the Republicans to understand all that,
but shouldn't we demand as much from the Democrats. After all, what
kind of practical resistance can they offer against Trump and company
without making a commitment to peace, justice, and humanity?
Some more links on Trump's little venture into Syria:
Michael R Shear/Michael R Gordon: 63 Hours: From Chemical Attack to
Trump's Strike in Syria: An hour-by-hour countdown focusing on
Trump: what he knew (not much), what options he had (not many), when
he decided to blow things up.
Peter Baker: For Obama, Syria Chemical Attack Shows Risk of 'Deals
With Dictators': Misleading title, and for that matter article.
I don't see any current quote from Obama -- just lots of former
Obama advisers like Anne-Marie Slaughter who were always hawkish
on Syria, who felt like the US missed an opportunity to flex its
muscles when Obama agreed to chemical weapons disarmament. The
dumbest of these quotes is from
Tom Malinowski, arguing that "deterrence is more effective than
disarmament." The real problem with the deal was that it didn't end
the war, which was the context that made any surviving chemical
weapons (including those in "rebel" hands) so dangerous. Still,
from a PR angle, it's automatically assumed that any poison gas in
Syria is Assad's fault, and this article (like so many in the NY
Times) reinforces that propaganda. (Not that I don't mind saying
that the war is Assad's fault, although its continuation is not
exclusively his fault.)
Moustafa Bayoumi: Trump's senseless Syria strikes accomplish nothing;
also:
Julian Borger/Spencer Ackerman: Trump's response to Syria's chemical
attack exposes administration's volatility.
Phyllis Bennis: The War in Syria Cannot Be Won. But It Can Be Ended.
I heard Bennis interviewed on Democracy Now with two Syrian women who
were almost giddy with delight over Trump's rocket attack in Syria, so
when she says "the left is profoundly divided over the conflict" that
may be in the back of her mind. I'd say that the Syrian women failed
to understand that the problem in Syria is not just Assad (although
it's hard to overstate how badly he's acted) but war itself, something
Trump and Putin and many others are fully guity of. The fact is that
nothing good can happen until the war stops.
Lauren Carroll: Fact-checking Trump's changing opinion on Syria and the
'red line'
Peter Cary: Hillary Clinton called for Donald Trump to 'take out' Assad
airfields hours before air strikes: Talk about lending comfort to
the enemy. The day after the strikes, Michelle Goldberg posted
Hillary Clinton Is Not Going Away and answering "Good." Goldberg's
apologia included this paragraph:
As bittersweet as it was to hear Clinton talk and imagine the sort of
president she might have been, the interview offered a stark reminder
of why many on the left distrusted her. Speaking hours before Trump
launched airstrikes on Syria, she made it clear that she'd also have
been a hawkish president. The United States, she said, should take out
Bashar al-Assad's airfields, "and prevent him from being able to use
them to bomb innocent people and drop Sarin gas on them." During the
campaign, she said, people asked her if she was afraid that her plan
to impose a no-fly zone in Syria would lead to a Russian response.
"It's time the Russians were afraid of us!" she said heatedly.
"Because we were going to stand up for human rights, the dignity
and the future of the Syrian people."
The Russians should be afraid of us? The whole world should cower
before our Shock and Awe? Running guns to Al-Qaeda while bombing ISIS
somehow is a stand for "human rights, the dignity and the future of
the Syrian people"? Given the alternative, I'm still sorry that she
lost, but really, this is batshit insane! And while at least I can
ascribe much of the horror that Trump leads on his own peculiar mix
of cynicism and laziness, compounded by the general mean-spiritedness
of his adopted political party, Clinton comes off as a true believer
in her self-aggrandizing fantasy. The rejection of her was the only
sane aspect of the 2016 election. It speaks volumes that the American
people were so desperate to get rid of her that they were willing to
accept the alternative. The more she returns to public life, the more
she detracts from the urgent task of resisting Trump.
Juan Cole: What Is It With US Presidents and Tomahawk Cruise-Missile
Strikes? Cole notes numerous examples, some I've referred to above,
others I hadn't -- e.g., Obama's first air assault against ISIS in
Syria started in 2014 with 47 Tomahawk missiles. I think the answer
to Cole's question is that the Tomahawks have much more range than
fighter-bombers or drones and require little preparation, so they're
the easiest weapon to choose when presidents want immediate results.
Still, the real question is why are such missile attacks so addicting
to presidents? What makes them feel entitled to kill so cavalierly?
And why can't they come up with more effective ways to resolve such
problems? A big part of this is that American politicians have become
obsessed with their omnipotence, so they find these massive missile
volleys very reassuring. I remember that back in the 1980s when DOD
planners were thinking of putting weapons in space, they designed one
that was nothing more than a huge tungsten rod that could be dropped
anywhere in the world. The tungsten would resist burning up in the
atmosphere, and it would gather the speed (and energy) of a meteor
before it crashed in a tremendous explosion. They named this terror
Rods
From God. And more generally, their term for showering a target
with overwhelming force was Shock and Awe.
Steve Coll: Trump's Confusing Strike on Syria: Another comment
which shows that once you get past gut reactions, Trump had no plan
or inkling what he was doing:
If President Trump broadens his aims against Assad, to establish
civilian safe havens, for example, or to ground Syria's Air Force,
or to bomb Assad to the negotiating table, he will enter the very
morass that Candidate Trump warned against. He would have to manage
risks -- military confrontation with Russia, an intensified refugee
crisis, a loss of momentum against ISIS -- that Obama studied at
great length and concluded to be unmanageable, at least at a cost
consistent with American interests.
Michael Crowley: Democratic Syria hawks love Trump's airstrikes
Robert Dreyfuss: Trump's Dangerous Syria Attack; also
Janet Reitman: What to Make of Trump's About-Face on Syria.
Greg Grandin: The Real Targets of Trump's Strike Were His Domestic
Critics: Six "thoughts," each hitting home. For example:
The bombing reveals that there are no limits to the media's ability
to be awed, if not shocked, by manufactured displays of techno-omnipotence.
Just as it did in the 1991 Gulf War, the Pentagon passed footage of its
nighttime missile launches to the networks. And just as what happened
then -- when, CBS's Charles Osgood called the bombing of Iraq "a marvel"
and Jim Stewart described it as "two days of almost picture-perfect
assaults" -- today MSNBC's Brian Williams called the Tomahawk takeoff
"beautiful." In fact, he described it as "beautiful" three times: "'They
are beautiful pictures of fearsome armaments making what is for them
what is a brief flight over to this airfield,' he added, then asked
his guest, 'What did they hit?'" Why, don't you know, they hit their
target: Williams and his colleagues' ability to have a critical thought.
Glenn Greenwald: The Spoils of War: Trump Lavished With Media and
Bipartisan Praise for Bombing Syria
Simon Jenkins: His emotions have been stirred -- but Trump's bombs won't
help Syria:
There is nothing in the world more dangerous than an American president
watching television. Donald Trump last night followed Ronald Reagan in
1982 and George Bush in 2001 as an isolationist turned interventionist
in the Middle East. His past pragmatism towards Syria's Assad regime and
its Russian backers underwent a 180-degree turn as 59 American missiles
rained down on a Syrian airbase. Welcome back to mission creep.
None of those three really count as isolationists (a historical stance
I have much respect for, although no one who held such views would have
ever described themselves as such; the label was coined by their opponents,
meant to suggest an ostrich burying its head in the sand, oblivious to
real threats all around). But all three share a remarkably shallow sense
of the world, as well as a cavalier eagerness to use violence when they
see some short-term political advantage. And like any good politician,
Trump put his heart on his sleeve:
Breaking from dinner with the Chinese leader, Trump spoke of his reaction
to "slow and brutal deaths," choking bodies and beautiful babies. He three
times invoked God. He had been moved to act, he said, because Assad's
"attack on children had a big impact on me." As for Russia's role in the
attack, Trump's secretary of state said it was "either complicit or
incompetent."
Safe to say that Trump won't react with the same "emotion" to
reports of Syrian children mangled by American bombs, because he
won't be able to find any political advantage in doing so.
Adam Johnson: Five Top Papers Run 18 Opinion Pieces Praising Syria
Strikes -- Zero Are Critical: Leave the dissent to The Onion.
Fred Kaplan: The Morning After in Syria
Alex Lockie: Syrian forces defiantly take off from airfield hit by
onslaught of US cruise missiles: Additional fallout:
Russia just suspended key military agreements with the US -- raising
the risk of war.
Carol Morello: Trump officials tell Russia to drop its support for Syria's
Assad: Henry Kissinger liked to study Clausewitz. Others preferred
to draw strategy lessons from Sun Tzu. This makes it sound like Trump's
people have been reading up on stupid pet tricks: Roll over. Play dead.
Robert Parry: Trump's 'Wag the Dog' Moment
Vijay Prashad: Is Trump Going to Commit the Next Great American Catastrophe
in Syria? This focuses on the alleged chemical weapons attack, and
covers what (little) is known and how it is known. It doesn't really
move into the question of how the US might parlay misunderstanding into
full-scale catastrophe, although there is a long record of just that
sort of thing.
David Smith: Doves and hawks: how opinion was divided about airstrikes
in Syria: Features four hawks and four doves, the former deeply
ensconced in Trump's White House and War Machine, the doves rather
oddly all right-wingers more/less associated with Trump: Steve Bannon
(recently booted from the NSC), Mike Cernovich (alt-right blogger),
Ann Coulter (all-around bigot), and Rand Paul (part-time libertarian).
Smith also co-wrote
As warplanes return to scene of sarin attack, Trump defends missile
launch: Twenty-four hours after Trump's attack, the bombed airbase
is open again, and planes from it are attacking "rebel"-held Khan
Sheikhun, albeit not with sarin gas this time. Meanwhile, Trump is
basking in the adoring glow of "liberal humanitarians" for making
the children of Syria so much safer.
Joan Walsh: Too Many of Trump's Liberal Critics Are Praising His Strike
on Syria: And not just Democrats with long records as neocon hawks
(like Hillary Clinton):
On CNN's New Day Thursday, global analyst Fareed Zakaria declared, "I
think Donald Trump became president of the United States" last night.
To his credit, Zakaria has previously called Trump a "bullshit artist"
and said, "He has gotten the presidency by bullshitting." But Zakaria
apparently thinks firing missiles make one presidential.
Walsh cites many others, including Bernie Sanders and Kirsten
Gillibrand, who at least had reservations. She also cited
Mark Landler: Acting on Instinct, Trump Upends His Own Foreign Policy,
which points out how impulsively Trump reacted (original title: "On Syria
attack, Trump's heart came first"): quotes Trump as saying "even beautiful
babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack" -- referring
to the Syrian chemical attack, but those words could just as well describe
many of Trump's own authorized bombing runs.
Also see:
Owen Jones: Why are liberals now cheerleading a warmongering
Trump?
One of the main objections to Trump was that he was unstable, impulsive,
with authoritarian instincts, and would disregard constitutional norms.
This has turned out to be true, while being applauded by his erstwhile
detractors for doing so, emboldening him to go further. Yet "I'm no fan
of Trump, but . . ." will be the battle cry of his erstwhile detractors.
Still, the children of Syria will die, just as they will die in Yemen and
Iraq and elsewhere. History will ask: how did this man become president?
And how did he maintain power when he did? Look no further than the
brittle, weak, pathetic liberal "opposition."
Whitney Webb: Russia Reports Discovery of Rebel-Held Chemical Weapons
at Site of Idlib Gas Attack
Matthew Yglesias: Trump brought his economics team to his Syria strike
watch party, for some reason: Well, there's also this story:
Tom Boggioni: Donald Trump personally profited from missile-maker
Raytheon's stock jump after his Syria attack. There was also
a spike in oil stock prices, which should warm Rex Tillerson's
slimy heart.
North Korea says Syria airstrikes prove its nukes justified:
And here you were, thinking Trump's best and brightest had figured
out all the angles.
The Onion: Trump Confident US Military Strike on Syria Wiped Out
Russian Scandal: OK, probably satire (as "fake news" used to
be called), not least the alleged Trump quote:
After ordering the first U.S. military attack against the regime of
Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, President Donald Trump held a press
conference Friday to express his full confidence that the airstrike
had completely wiped out the lingering Russian scandal. "Based on
intelligence we have received over the past several hours, the attack
on the al-Shayrat air base in Homs has successfully eliminated all
discussions and allegations about my administration's ties to the
Russian government," said Trump, adding that at approximately 4:40
a.m. local time, 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from U.S. naval
ships obliterated all traces of the widespread controversy in news
outlets across the media. "Ordering this strike was not a decision
I took lightly, but given that it was the only way to decisively
eradicate any attention being paid to congressional investigations
into possible collusion between key members of my staff and high-ranking
Kremlin officials, I decided it was a necessary course of action. If
we learn that any remnants of this scandal remain after this attack,
I will not hesitate to order further strikes." Trump went on to say
that he is leaving the option open for a potential ground invasion
of Syria if any troubling evidence emerges that the Russian government
manipulated the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.
Tweets I've noticed along the way:
-
Anne-Marie Slaughter: Donald Trump has done the right thing on
Syria. Finally!! After years of useless handwringing in the face
of hideous atrocities.
-
Lee Fang: Like clock work all cable news has retired generals
(many of whom work at defence firms) on air to give the sports-style
play-by-play
-
Christopher Hayes: As legions of ex-Obama officials endorse the
strike, it's more and more clear the degree to which Obama was
resisting his own advisors.
-
Asad Abukhalil: Let me get this straight: so according to DC
pundits, Trump was a dangerous maniac . . .until he started bombing?
A couple of unrelated links, just to note them:
Part I: Our Dishonest President: I linked to this Los Angeles Times
editorial a while back. It was promised as the first of four daily jeremiads,
so now we also have:
After reading the first one, I predicted they'd have trouble stopping
at four.
Andrew J Bacevich: The Odds Against Antiwar Warriors: Review of
Michael Kazin, War Against War: The American Fight for Peace,
1914-1918.
Ari Berman: The GOP Has Declared War on Democracy: One of probably
many articles on new Supreme Court justice Neil Gorsuch and/or the
way he was confirmed. As far back as Nixon, Republicans have adopted
Vince Lombardi's maxim: "winning is the only thing." They've just
become more craven (and sometimes desperate) about it.
Lee Fang: Koch Brothers' Operatives Fill Top White House Positions,
Ethics Forms Reveal
Rebecca Gordon: Donald Trump Hasa Passionate Desire to Bring Back
Torture: The essential purpose of torture is, and has always
been, to show the subject who's boss, so how surprising is it that
America's most famous (notorious, even) boss should be a fan. That
I'm not may well explain why I've never watched Trump's television
show.
Greg Grandin: Obsession With the Russia Connection Is a High-Risk
Anti-Trump Strategy: "It lets Democrats off the hook for their own
failures -- and betting the resistance on finding a smoking gun is a
fool's game." Article graphic features Rachel Maddow.
William Greider: Why Today's GOP Crackup Is the Final Unraveling of
Nixon's 'Southern Strategy'
Gary Younge: The Far Right Finally Has Brexit -- and It's Making a
Royal Mess of It
Ask a question, or send a comment.
|