President Trump’s self-described “flexibility” may not be a liability after all. After campaigning on an isolationist foreign policy, Trump is now considering the prospect of military intervention in Syria in response to Tuesday’s sarin gas attack on civilians in rebel-held Idlib province.
“Something should happen” against Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad said the Commander-in-Chief aboard Air Force One.
“I think what Assad did is terrible. I think what happened in Syria is one of the truly egregious crimes. It shouldn’t have happened. It shouldn’t be allowed to happen,” Trump told reporters. “I think what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity. He’s there, and I guess he’s running things, so something should happen.”
The people of Syria have been waiting six years to hear those words.
At a press conference on Wednesday, an emotional Trump stated that his views on the crisis in Syria have evolved since seeing images of children foaming at the mouth and suffocating to the death as a result of the Assad regime’s chemical weapons attack.
Since 2011, the people of Syria have suffered every kind of death imaginable. Death by cluster munitions. Death by sarin gas. Death by chlorine gas. Death by starvation. Death by infection and disease.
As report after report of unfathomable suffering hit former President Obama’s desk during his tenure in the Oval Office, he came up with every excuse in the book to justify his lack of resolve and turn a blind eye to genocide. In the process, America lost its moral bearing.
But President Trump’s latest announcement will go a long way in restoring America’s moral standing abroad. “Never again,” the phrase immortalized in the aftermath of the Holocaust, may finally mean something.
Sources familiar with the deliberations say that Trump is consulting with both Sec. of Defense Mattis and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster on possible military options in Syria.
The president’s master tacticians are likely looking at options designed to paralyze Assad’s ability to carry out gas attacks in the future; this may include bombing the Syrian regime’s air fleet and downing helicopters used to deploy sarin and chlorine gasses.
The Pentagon will likely be meticulous about drawing up plans that will avoid Russian casualties. With Russian military personnel stationed across the country, the death of even one Russian officer may create a major diplomatic row, or worse lead to war.
According to CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr, the Pentagon is more than capable of quickly placing well-crafted plans mitigating the likelihood of a geopolitical crisis on President Trump’s desk. In fact, such plans already appears to be in the works.
Congress’ foremost Syria hawks, who have speaking out on the human rights disaster in the country for a number of years now, praised Trump’s willingness to act after the shameful morally bankruptcy of the Obama presidency.
“We agree with the President that Assad has crossed a line with his latest use of chemical weapons. The message from the United States must be that this will not stand. We must show that no foreign power can or will protect Assad now. He must pay a punitive cost for this horrific attack,” Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham said in a joint statement. “In addition to other measures, the United States should lead an international coalition to ground Assad’s air force. This capability provides Assad a strategic advantage in his brutal slaughter of innocent civilians, both through the use of chemical weapons as well as barrel bombs, which kill far more men, women and children on a daily basis … Ultimately, the grounding of Assad’s air force can and should be part of a new comprehensive strategy to end the conflict in Syria.”
A reckoning may be coming soon for the bloody butcher of Damascus. In one day, President Trump has shown more moral courage than Barack Obama ever did in his eight years in office. Say what you want about the man, but the fact that Trump is willing to take action on genocide is a lot more than we could say about his predecessor.