Anyonewho supportsthese missile strikes has to account for what comes next.
CNN host Fareed Zakaria speaks about President Donald Trumps missile strikes on Syria during an Anderson Cooper 360 segment. (Screengrab / CNN)
It shouldnt be surprising, but it is to me nonetheless: Plenty of liberals whove long criticized Donald Trump as unfit to be president are praising his strike on Syrian airfields.
On CNNs New Day Thursday, global analystFareed Zakariadeclared, 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. On MSNBC, Nicholas Kristof, an aggressive Trump critic, said he did the right thing by bombing Syria. Anchor Brian Williams, whose 11thHour has regularly been critical of Trump, repeatedly called the missiles beautiful, to a noisy backlash on Twitter.
While TheNew York Times posted several skeptical, even critical stories, it gave us this piece of propaganda: an article initially titled On Syria attack, Trumps heart came first, buying the presidents line that his opposition to anti-Assad military action was reversed by seeing the heartrending photos of children struggling to breathe after a chemical attack.
Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack, Trumpdeclared. No child of God should ever suffer such horror. (No word how he felt about ugly babies.) The piece also failed to even mention that Trump is keeping refugees from the Syrian war, even children, out of the United States. Victims of chemical weapons are beautiful babies; children trying to flee such violence require extreme vetting and an indefinite refugee ban. After a public outcry, the Times changed the headline.
Even some Obama administration veterans praised Trumps action. President Donald J. Trump was right to strike at the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for using a weapon of mass destruction, the nerve agent sarin, against its own people, Antony Blinken, a deputy secretary of state under Obama,wrote in The New York Times. Blinken went on to say, correctly in theory, that what must come next is smart diplomacy. But he knows that Trump has shown himself incapable of doing anything smart, especially diplomacy.
Remember just last week, phantom Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in Turkey: I think thelonger-term status of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian people. The Kremlin-funded Russia Today described that as a U-turn from Washingtons long-held policy that Assad must go. Six days later, Tillerson was telling reporters,There is no doubt in our minds, and the information we have supports, that the Syrian regime under the leadership of Bashar al-Assad are responsible for this attack. It is very important that the Russian government consider carefully their support for Bashar al-Assad,because steps are underway to muster international support for a strike. Russia Today seemed disappointed that the United States believes Assad is behind the gassing of his people, arguing that the source is the international rescue group White Helmets, which RT shockingly calls al-Qaida affiliated.
Any liberal who praises these missile strikes has to account for what comes next. Obviously, Trump cares little about diplomacy, leaving Tillerson out of key meetings and slashing the State Departments budget. On Wednesday night, the White House released a photo of his team receiving a briefing on the Syria attack. At the table were Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross; Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin; Goldman Sachs alum Dina Powell, deputy national-security adviser; along with Jared Kushner; Steve Bannon; and Bannons sidekick Steven Miller. Why are the Commerce and Treasury secretaries there? What explains why Tillerson, who was in Palm Beach with the president, was not?
The noisiest outrage against the Syrian attack isnt coming from the left, but the rightparticularly the alt-right. Trumps noninterventionism and his friendliness to Bashar Assad and Vladimir Putin were big selling points to white nationalists. Now that he seems to be challenging both men, his former acolytes are enraged. On Twitter, alt-right white supremacist Richard Spencer called it a total betrayal; the white nationalists at VDARE blamed it on the boomercucks in the administration. Ann Coulter went apoplectic:
It was disappointing to see Hillary Clinton say Wednesday afternoon that she thought air strikes on Syrian airfields were an appropriate response to the chemical-weapon attack. She was always more hawkish than I wished, and that shows it. But its wrong to insist shed have done the same thing as Trump. Clintons secretary of state wouldnt likely have told Assad we were no longer concerned about removing him; if she did fire missiles at Syrian airfields, she would have done so with a clearer notion of what comes next. Trump appears to be clueless.
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Senator Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, didnt quite oppose the Syrian strike, calling Assad a war criminal and lamenting his murder of civilians with chemical weapons. But noting that its that its easier to get into a war than get out of one, Sanders demanded that Trump must explain to the American people exactly what this military escalation in Syria is intended to achieve, and how it fits into the broader goal of a political solution, which is the only way Syrias devastating civil war ends.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand sounded closer to Sanders than Clinton on the airstrikes, decrying Trumps unilateral military action by the US in a Middle East conflict as well as the absence of any long-term plan or strategy to address any consequences from such unilateral action. Like Sanders, she demanded that Trump seek authorization of military force from Congress. By contrast, her New York colleague Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called Trumps move the right thing to do. Schumer may find that many constituents think it was the wrong thing.
There remains the possibility that some of this is theater. It should be said: Some observers, besides RT, say its unproven that the chemical weapons attack came from Assad; rebels could be behind it. Theres also the possibility of a kabuki performance from Trump, Putin, and Assad. We already know the United States warned Putin of the coming missiles, and that Putin warned Assad, whose military moved airplanes and other military equipment away from the intended target. Trump, plummeting in the polls, his domestic health-care and tax plans on the rocks, the investigation into Russian election meddling closing in on his team, really needed a boost; maybe they gave it to him. Trumps sudden about-face on Syria makes it hard to judge.
However, according to Syrian state media, nine civilians, including four children, were killed in the air strikes. That is not kabuki. Trump has said nothing about those beautiful babies, nor will he. Liberals have to sober up and stop being besotted by beautiful missiles and presidential cruelty. Trump is the same Trump he was Tuesday, and that should scare all of us.
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Too Many of Trump's Liberal Critics Are Praising His Strike on Syria - The Nation.