Assad Falls In Syria - Will The New Regime Be Better?

 The last couple of weeks in Syria have shocked the world. The Syrian rebels (Hyatt Tahrir al-Sham or "HTS") proved stronger than anyone expected. They have captured Syria's major cities, including Damascus, and ousted Assad. Reports are that Assad has left the country, leaving instructions for his government to have a peaceful transfer of power.

What does this mean for Syria? Have they jumped from the frying pan into the fire? Will they have a new government that respects all people of the country, or a strict Islamic government like Iran (or even worse, like Afghanistan)? There is some evidence that the former may be true. Here is how The Washington Post reports it:

According to a broad array of analysts and Syria experts, HTS also has changed, not just in its rhetoric but in its actions, including at least an initial public embrace of pluralism and religious freedom in areas that it has come to occupy.

Whether HTS’s professions of reform are genuine is far from clear. It is one unknown among a swirl of uncertainties in a crisis changing so rapidly that Western intelligence analysts acknowledge they are struggling to keep up.

The outcome could have major security impacts for Syria’s neighbors as well as the hundreds of U.S. service personnel deployed at military outposts in southern and northeastern Syria. The consequences could be even more profound for ordinary Syrians, including the 14 million — more than two-thirds of the country’s population — who are internally displaced or living as refugees, and the vast numbers of others who are simply exhausted after 13 years of conflict. . . .

By all accounts, HTS has evolved considerably since the days of the “catastrophic success” warnings. By 2015, the group formerly known as al-Nusra Front had changed its name and disavowed any ties with the Islamic State, its parent organization. In 2016, its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, had also publicly broken with al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups.

Jolani has sought since then to cultivate a more moderate, tolerant image and to root out — sometimes brutally — Islamic State supporters in his enclave as well as extremists within his organization, analysts say.

Even as his army was on the march in the past two weeks, Jolani has gone out of his way to present his reformer’s credentials to Western audiences, offering interviews to CNN and the New York Times.

“No one has the right to erase another group,” Jolani said of Syria’s ethnic and religious minorities in a CNN interview broadcast on Friday. “These sects have coexisted in this region for hundreds of years, and no one has the right to eliminate them.”

Jolani even suggested that he might disband his own organization in order to build a new government that represented all parts of Syrian society.

“We are talking about building Syria,” Jolani said. “Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is merely one part of this dialogue, and it may dissolve at any time. It is not an end in itself but a means to perform a task: confronting this regime.”

Syrian advocacy groups say Jolani has generally followed through on his pledge of moderation by allowing freedom of worship and granting rights to women — including the right to pursue professional careers and attend college — in HTS’s Idlib stronghold, as well as the cities that have recently fallen to the group.

Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a Washington-based advocacy group with an extensive network in northern Syria, said Aleppo’s citizens have largely welcomed the HTS fighters. A prominent leader of the city’s Orthodox community told him that Christian neighborhoods were putting up Christmas decorations without rebel interference, Moustafa said. . . .

Still, several U.S. and Middle Eastern analysts said they are not yet convinced by Jolani’s claims of reform.

Trump's Withdrawal Is The Best Thing For ISIS In Months

(Cartoon image is by Jimmy Margulies at jimmymargulies.com.)



Donald Trump's abrupt and senseless withdrawal from northern Syria is disastrous for our best allies in that area -- the Kurds. It allows them to become the victims of ethnic cleansing by Turkey -- who is forcibly removing them from their homeland and replacing them with Arabs.

There are also some winners from Trump's actions -- notably Turkey, Syria, and Russia (who is now going to help Turkey kick the Kurds out. And there is another big winner -- ISIS. Trump continues to brag about how he has defeated ISIS, but his action gives ISIS the best chance they have had to come back and be a danger to the rest of the world -- including the United States.

The following is part of an op-ed on the situation by David D. Kirkpatrick (pictured on upper left) and Eric Schmitt (pictured on upper right) in The New York Times:

American forces and their Kurdish-led partners in Syria had been conducting as many as a dozen counterterrorism missions a day against Islamic State militants, officials said. That has stopped.

Those same partners, the Syrian Democratic Forces, had also been quietly releasing some Islamic State prisoners and incorporating them into their ranks, in part as a way to keep them under watch. That, too, is now in jeopardy. 

And across Syria’s porous border with Iraq, Islamic State fighters are conducting a campaign of assassination against local village headmen, in part to intimidate government informants. 

When President Trump announced this month that he would pull American troops out of northern Syria and make way for a Turkish attack on the Kurds, Washington’s onetime allies, many warned that he was removing the spearhead of the campaign to defeat the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

Now, analysts say that Mr. Trump’s pullout has handed the Islamic State its biggest win in more than four years and greatly improved its prospects. With American forces rushing for the exits, in fact, American officials said last week that they were already losing their ability to collect critical intelligence about the group’s operations on the ground. 

“There is no question that ISIS is one of the big winners in what is happening in Syria,” said Lina Khatib, director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Chatham House, a research center in London.

Cutting support for the Syrian Democratic Forces has crippled the ability of the United States and its former partners to hunt down the group’s remnants.

News of the American withdrawal set off jubilation among Islamic State supporters on social media and encrypted chat networks. It has lifted the morale of fighters in affiliates as far away as Libya and Nigeria.

And, by removing a critical counterforce, the pullout has eased the re-emergence of the Islamic State’s core as a terrorist network or a more conventional, and potentially long-lasting, insurgency based in Syria and Iraq.

Although Mr. Trump has repeatedly declared victory over the Islamic State — even boasting to congressional leaders last week that he had personally “captured ISIS” — it remains a threat. After the loss in March of the last patch of the territory it once held across Syria and Iraq, the Islamic State dispersed its supporters and fighters to blend in with the larger population or to hide out in remote deserts and mountains.

The group retains as many as 18,000 “members” in Iraq and Syria, including up to 3,000 foreigners, according to estimates cited in a recent Pentagon report. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliph, is still at large.

Many U.S. Soldiers Disgusted With Trump's Syria Withdrawal

(Photo of Turkish tanks poised to invade Syria is by Unit Bektas at ukdefencejournal.org.uk.)

It shouldn't surprise us that many soldiers are not happy with Trump's decision to betray our Kurdish allies. The following is by Steve Benen at The MaddowBlog:

In a recent piece for The Atlantic, Mark Bowden took a closer look at what it’s like for U.S. troops to serve under Donald Trump, interviewing “officers up and down the ranks, as well as several present and former civilian Pentagon employees.” The results were striking.

“In 20 years of writing about the military, I have never heard officers in high positions express such alarm about a president,” the article noted.

This, of course, was before the president ignored his national security team, withdrew U.S. forces from northern Syria, and effectively invited Turkey to launch a brutal offensive against our Kurdish allies. As the Washington Post reported yesterday, Trump’s decision isn’t sitting well with many U.S. service members.

U.S. veterans have supported Trump in part because of his often-repeated promises to extricate the U.S. military from a generation at war, numerous polls have found. But the calamity on the ground in Syria has wrought angry reactions from service members like few other recent foreign policy decisions.

Troops have reacted viscerally in interviews and on social media despite Defense Department restrictions on them expressing political opinions.

The Post spoke with many troops who “expressed disgust” with the president’s decision.

“I can’t even look at the atrocities,” one Army officer who served in Syria last year said. “The ISIS mission is going to stop, ISIS is going to have a resurgence, and we’re going to have to go back in five years and do it all again.”

A day earlier, David Ignatius wrote in his latest column about a conversation he’d had with a retired four-star general who described Trump’s retreat from Syria as an “unsound, morally indefensible act” and a “disgrace” to America and the soldiers who serve this country.

Ignatius also spoke to an Army officer who added, in reference to Trump’s decision, “It will go down in infamy…. This will go down as a stain on the American reputation for decades.”

The president seems to assume that he enjoys broad political support within the military, which he perceives as conservative, and there’s probably some truth to that. The Military Times reported a few months ago on a poll of U.S. military veterans and the results showed Trump with a 57% approval rating, while 41% disapprove. This is roughly the inverse of Trump’s support with the overall U.S. population.

But if the president believes those numbers can never and will never change, he may be disappointed.

Trump's Message To World: U.S. Words/Values Are Worthless

(Photo of Turkish attack on Kurds in Syria, from Vox.com, is by Delil Souleiman/Getty Images.)

Rep. Seth Moulton (pictured) has written the op-ed below. He is disappointed that Trump has abandoned our Kurdish allies -- sending a message to the world that American words and values are worthless.

(Congressman Seth Moulton represents Massachusetts’s 6th District in the House of Representatives. Prior to serving in Congress, Moulton served four tours of duty in Iraq as a Captain in the United States Marine Corps. He lives in Salem with his wife, Liz, and his daughter, Emmy.)

“We’ve got your back.”

These are words every American veteran knows. We say that to each other, and we say it to our allies.

President Trump only says it to our enemies.

Trump said he “fell in love” with Kim Jung Un, curtailing our military exercises and repeatedly handing him propaganda victories, for almost nothing in return.Trump had Vladimir Putin’s back in Helsinki when he said he believed Putin over our intelligence community. And now we’ve learned that he withheld military aid to our ally Ukraine in exchange for exploring a conspiracy theory against Joe Biden.

Now, with Trump’s retreat from Northern Syria, he is choosing to have the back of Turkish President Recep Erdoğan, a known Putin protege, rather than the Kurdish fighters who have fought alongside American troops against ISIS and other terrorists for decades.

And make no mistake: ISIS will be celebrating. The only thing stopping ISIS right now is the Kurds in Northern Syria, supported by the American troops Trump just told to retreat.

Ask any American veteran of the Middle East who has worked with the Kurds and he or she will tell you they’re our most trusted ally. After years of brutal fighting, they now hold an estimated 11,000 ISIS fighters in prison — prisons that will be overrun by the Turkish troops Trump backs.

Escaped ISIS fighters will combine with the new generation of fighters ISIS operatives are recruiting in the refugee camps in Northeast Syria to undo the years of progress we’ve made against this international terrorist group.

The result: It puts American troops in greater danger. It puts America and our allies in greater danger.

Remember, this isn’t the first time Trump has tried this. Former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, under whom I served in Iraq, resigned rather than allow the president to withdraw Americans from Northern Syria, because he knew it would hand ISIS a victory.

Republicans agree. It’s encouraging to see Senators Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney and Lindsey Graham speaking up for the Kurds and against the president. But Trump has run over these Republicans in the past, just as he’s running over the Kurds today, and it looks like he will again.

Beyond the physical danger President Trump's decision creates, there is moral danger, too. When America betrays its allies and sides with strongmen, it sends a message around the world that our word and our values are worthless.

It emboldens Russia and encourages Putin to continue undermining our elections and destabilizing Europe. The next time we ask the Palestinians to make concessions to achieve a peace plan, they will rightfully point to the Kurds as a reason not to trust us. Israeli pundits are already pointing at this decision as a reason for Israel to act unilaterally in the region. And, if the president wants to succeed in North Korea, he will need South Korea, Japan, Australia and our other allies to trust him. I wouldn’t blame them for doubting his word.

Republicans in the House and Senate, and Americans across the country who care about the value of America’s word, need to hold the president accountable. To the American patriots who support the president, I would pose this question: For how long are you willing to watch him erode our values, cozy up to dictators and sell out our allies — and still tell him, “Mr. President, ‘We’ve got your back.’”

Trump Abandons The Kurds For Personal Financial Gain

Our most faithful and effective allies in the fight against ISIS in Syria has been the Kurdish fighters. (known as the Syrian Democratic Forces). We owe them a huge debt of gratitude, but Donald Trump has decided to throw them under the bus instead. He has announced that he is pulling U.S. troops back from the part of Syria near the Turkish border, and has given Turkish strongman Recep Erdogan his blessing to move into that part of Syria.

This area is the homeland of the Kurds, who have wanted to create their own country there (and in a small part of Turkey bordering Syria). It looks like, thanks to Trump, that Kurdish dream of freedom and their own country will now die. The Turkish president regards the Kurdish fighters as terrorist, and undoubtably will be attacking them.

Why is Trump doing this? Is it because he has a hotel (and other investments) in Istanbul? Is Trump abandoning the Kurds to an awful fate so he can make more money in Turkey? What financial inducements has Erdogan promised Trump? It looks like our foreign policy is being influenced by Trump's own financial gain. This is why U.S. presidents should divest themselves of their businesses before taking office (which other presidents have done, but which Trump refused to do).

It was to prevent actions like this that our Founding Fathers put an Emoluments Clause in our Constitution -- to prevent foreign policy from being dictated by a president's personal financial gain. Trump has repeatedly violated that clause of the Constitution. It is just one more reason why he must be IMPEACHED!

Public Is Not Happy With Trump As Commander-In-Chief

Donald Trump surprised his generals (and everyone else) by abruptly announcing he would be withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria immediately. And the war in Afghanistan just keeps going with no end in sight, even though Trump also announced he would be withdrawing some troops from that country -- again at the displeasure of our military leaders and without asking them.

Is Trump doing the right thing in Syria? Does he have a clear and coherent plan for the Afghan War? And perhaps most important, does he have the confidence of the American people to perform as this nation's commander-in-chief?

The Economist / YouGov Poll posed those questions to a national sample of 1,298 registered voters between December 23rd and 25th. The poll has a margin of error of 2.8 points.

The results were not something Trump could be proud of. By a 12 point margin (56% to 44%), the voters said they did NOT have confidence in Trump's ability to act as commander-in-chief. By a 6 point margin (44% to 38%), they opposed Trump's action in Syria. And by a whopping 32 point margin (55% to 23%), they said Trump has no clear plan for the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.

Mission Accomplished? Who Were The Real Winners?

That was Trump's tweet after 105 Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired at Syria -- 76 fired at a research facility, 22 fired at a storage facility, and 7 fired at a chemical weapons bunker. The U.S. is claiming it has destroyed Syria's ability to make and use chemical weapons. That's doubtful. While some buildings were destroyed, the Russians and Syrians had several days to prepare for the strike. It looks a lot like the previous missile strike against Syria -- when they were warned it would happen and moved their planes out of the way, and only a few buildings were damaged.

If anything was accomplished, it was only a public relations effort. The U.S., Great Britain, and  France were able to make a statement against the use of chemical weapons. And Donald Trump got to feed his narcissism and pose as a strongman willing to use military power.

There were some winners after the missile strike, but it wasn't the United States, Great Britain, or France. It was Syria, Russia, and Iran. They were winners because the strike did nothing to degrade their military power in Syria.

Syria can continue its war against its own people, which they are winning. Soon, Assad will be able to once again impose his brutal regime on all Syrians.

Russia can continue to aid Assad. They will be rewarded with a client state in the Middle East that is friendly to them -- and a warm water port on the Mediterranean.

Iran, who once stood alone in that area of the world, will have a friend now (and likely another in Iraq, since they are also helping their with troops on the ground).

And there is one more winner -- an American corporation (Raytheon). They will now get to replace those 105 cruise missiles at a cost of about $1.87 million each.

Russian And U.S. Troops Are Fighting Each Other In Syria

(This image of Russian "mercenaries" is by Vasily Maximov / APF / Getty images.)

Things are starting to get very scary in Syria. The American public, thanks to lies from the Trump administration, is under the impression that Russia and the United States are operating together to fight ISIS in Syria. The truth is very different. Russia is there to help the Assad government stay in power, and the U.S. is there to aid the Kurds and Syrians fighting against Assad.

Russia has what it calls "mercenaries" fighting on the ground in Syria. But make no mistake. That designation is just to give Russia some "plausible deniability". Those are Russian soldiers operating under orders from the Russian government (Putin). And they are fighting U.S. troops stationed in Syria.

Last week, Syrian government troops and Russian "mercenaries" attacked a base in Deer Ezzor -- a base where the Russians knew U.S. (and Kurdish) troops were stationed. The attack was beaten back by American air power, and those mercenaries suffered heavy casualties (which were flown by Russian Air Force to military hospitals in Moscow and St. Petersburg).

Make no mistake -- Russia and the United States are now in a shooting war. So far, this is confined to a small part of Syria. Will it remain that way, or does this portend a wider war between the two countries?

Neither the U.S. nor Russia has a legitimate reason to have troops in Syria. That's a conflict that must be settled by the Syrians. Once both sent troops to Syria, it was inevitable that they would sooner or later be fighting each other. Now, it is happening.

Do Putin and Trump have enough sense to step back and stop this? I doubt it. Both are narcissists who can't admit any wrongdoing or mistakes -- and both would like to impose their will on the Middle East through military power. There is a very good chance that this situation gets worse instead of better.

Trump Adm. Killing 450% More Civilians Than Obama Adm.

(The image above is from Waking Times.)

During the Obama administration, an average of 80 innocent civilians were killed each month by U.S. bombing. That's a terrible average, but compared to the Trump administration it seems small. The Trump administration is killing an average of 360 innocent civilians each month -- about 4.5 times the number killed during the term of President Obama.

Trump promised to bomb the s**t out of ISIS and he seems to be keeping that promises (one of the few promises he has kept), but that bombing is indiscriminate (and kills many more innocent civilians). He doesn't seem to realize that the bombing of civilians creates more terrorists than it kills.

ISIS is going to lose the territory it currently holds in Iraq and Syria. It was losing that territory under Obama, and Trump has continued that. But don't be fooled into thinking that will be the end of terrorist acts committed by ISIS, al-Queda, and others. Terrorists have never needed to hold territory to commit their atrocious acts. That will continue -- and the increased bombing of civilians just insures there will be more terrorists to carry out those acts.

Another Difference Between Democrats And Republicans

The poll above is very revealing when it comes to the difference between the political parties. MSNBC polled members of both parties on whether they supported a military strike by the U.S. against Syria.

In 2013, 38% of Democrats supported such a strike, and in 2017 a similar 37% supported a strike. It shows that the Democrats who supported such a strike did so whether it was done by a Democrat or a Republican in the White House.

It's far different with Republicans. In 2013, only 22% of Republicans supported a military strike against Syria, but in 2017 that support had climbed to a whopping 86%. It seems that those Republicans opposed a strike in 2013 only because an African-American president was in the White House. They were fine with a military strike in 2017, because a White Republican was in the White House.

Laura Clawson at Daily Kos said:

It’s almost like people in one party have some principles and people in the other just care whether a member of their team in in charge.

I think she's exactly right.

Attack Has More Believing Trump Will Get Us In A War

Trump's missile attack on Syria doesn't seem to have helped his job approval numbers (which I believe was the real reason behind the attack), but it did accomplish one thing -- it has more Americans believing that it's likely that Trump will get us into a new (or bigger) war.

That belief has climbed among the general public from 51% last week to 62% this week -- a sizable jump of 11 points. The increase in those who now expect Trump will get us in a war also increased in both political parties -- by 15 points among Republicans and by 10 points among Democrats.

The chart is from an Economist / YouGov Poll -- done on April 10th and 11th of a random national sample of 1,500 adults (including 1,330 registered voters), with a margin of error of 3.2 points.

Spicer Flops While Trying To Explain Nonexistent Policy

(Cartoon image is by Marian Kamensky at cagle.com.)

White House Press Secretary embarrassed himself while trying to explain the Syrian policy of the Trump administration the other day. That's understandable, since that policy doesn't seem to exist. Here is Dan Rather's take on the situation:

It is with sadness that I do not know where to begin. Today in a briefing, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer issued a statement that is so far beyond the pale, so tone deaf and blind to history and our precarious moment in world affairs, that it is with only a heavy heart that I even bring attention to it. There can be no joy in such incompetence. 

In trying to make the case for the Administration's policy in Syria and vis a vis Russia which is confused to be generous, and wildly chaotic to be more precise, Mr. Spicer said, “We didn’t use chemical weapons in World War II. You know, you had someone as despicable as Hitler who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons.” He continued, “So you have to, if you are Russia, ask yourself: Is this a country and a regime that you want to align yourself with?” When asked to clarify, Mr. Spicer said, "“I think when you come to sarin gas, he (Hitler) was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Assad is doing.” Mr. Spicer went on to mention "Holocaust centers," in an apparent reference to the Nazi concentration camps. 

This line of rhetoric is so unhinged, so amateurish, so lacking in the context and perspective necessary for statesmanship and diplomacy that I do not see how Mr. Spicer can be allowed to continue in his current position. But in the end, this is less about him and more about an Administration that is inserting itself in a civil war and now is plunging into a drastic reformulation of American foreign policy without any clear sense that they have a plan. When you try to explain such a situation, it is understandable that your words don't make sense. 

A bar, already set low, continues to drop.

It Was A Publicity Stunt - Not A Foreign Policy Statement

The following post is much of a column by Paul Krugman in the New York Times:

. . . showy actions that win a news cycle or two are no substitute for actual, coherent policies. Indeed, their main lasting effect can be to squander a government’s credibility. Which brings us to last week’s missile strike on Syria.

The attack instantly transformed news coverage of the Trump administration. Suddenly stories about infighting and dysfunction were replaced with screaming headlines about the president’s toughness and footage of Tomahawk launches.

But outside its effect on the news cycle, how much did the strike actually accomplish? A few hours after the attack, Syrian warplanes were taking offfrom the same airfield, and airstrikes resumed on the town where use of poison gas provoked Mr. Trump into action. No doubt the Assad forces took some real losses, but there’s no reason to believe that a one-time action will have any effect on the course of Syria’s civil war.

In fact, if last week’s action was the end of the story, the eventual effect may well be to strengthen the Assad regime — Look, they stood up to a superpower! — and weaken American credibility. To achieve any lasting result, Mr. Trump would have to get involved on a sustained basis in Syria.

Doing what, you ask? Well, that’s the big question — and the lack of good answers to that question is the reason President Barack Obama decided not to start something nobody knew how to finish.

So what have we learned from the Syria attack and its aftermath?

No, we haven’t learned that Mr. Trump is an effective leader. Ordering the U.S. military to fire off some missiles is easy. Doing so in a way that actually serves American interests is the hard part, and we’ve seen no indication whatsoever that Mr. Trump and his advisers have figured that part out.

Actually, what we know of the decision-making process is anything but reassuring. Just days before the strike, the Trump administration seemed to be signaling lack of interest in Syrian regime change.

What changed? The images of poison-gas victims were horrible, but Syria has been an incredible horror story for years. Is Mr. Trump making life-and-death national security decisions based on TV coverage?

One thing is certain: The media reaction to the Syria strike showed that many pundits and news organizations have learned nothing from past failures.

Mr. Trump may like to claim that the media are biased against him, but the truth is that they’ve bent over backward in his favor. They want to seem balanced, even when there is no balance; they have been desperate for excuses to ignore the dubious circumstances of his election and his erratic behavior in office, and start treating him as a normal president.

You may recall how, a month and a half ago, pundits eagerly declared that Mr. Trump “became the president of the United States today” because he managed to read a speech off a teleprompter without going off script. Then he started tweeting again.

One might have expected that experience to serve as a lesson. But no: The U.S. fired off some missiles, and once again Mr. Trump “became president.” Aside from everything else, think about the incentives this creates. The Trump administration now knows that it can always crowd out reporting about its scandals and failures by bombing someone.

So here’s a hint: Real leadership means devising and carrying out sustained policies that make the world a better place. Publicity stunts may generate a few days of favorable media coverage, but they end up making America weaker, not stronger, because they show the world that we have a government that can’t follow through.

And has anyone seen a sign, any sign, that Mr. Trump is ready to provide real leadership in that sense? I haven’t.

Americans Cautiously Support Syrian Bombing

It looks like Trump has fooled a majority of Americans with his missile strike against Syria. About 57% say they approve of Trump's action. But that is a cautious approval, and not a desire for more action in Syria.

A whopping 69% of the public say Trump needs to get congressional approval before taking further military action against Syria -- and only a tiny 18% would support sending ground troops to Syria (which Trump has already done secretly).Americans don't want a bigger war in the Middle East.

These charts are from a new CBS News Poll -- done between April 7th and 9th of a random national sample of 1,006 adults, with a 4 point margin of error.

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The Gallup Poll (done on April 7th and 8th of a random national sample of 1,015 adults, with a 4 point margin of error) puts support for the strike a little lower -- at about 50%. They compared support for the Syrian strike with military actions by other presidents (see chart below) -- and Trump's attack on Syria had less public support than almost all of the others (with the single exception of the March 2011 action against Libya).

As I said above, the support for the attack on Syria is cautious and tenuous -- and should not be viewed as permission to broaden the Iraq/Syria war.

Press Should Be More Skeptical Of The Syrian Bombing

(Cartoon image is by Darrin Bell at darrinbell.com.)

Dan Rather thinks the mainstream media was too quick to support Trump's cruise missile attack on a Syrian air base. He writes:

The President of the United States is the Commander in Chief. It is an awesome responsibility. Committing the use of force and American men and women in uniform is about as serious as it gets. But the truly great presidents understand that knowing when NOT to act is as important as knowing when to act. 

It is a whole lot easier starting wars than finishing them. And there are many historical examples of where a promise of limited engagement quickly metastasized into something much bigger. 

There is a tendency to rally around the flag, and a President who takes on a war footing can see a boost of support. It is often transitory. There are arguments to be made that President Assad in Syria has crossed a line that demands U.S. military interference. Whether this should have been a unilateral action is something we all must consider. Whether President Trump has a plan for what comes next must be debated. Whether there is a coherence to this missile strike fitting into a larger foreign policy strategy is a question that should give us all pause. 

The role of the press is to ask hard questions. There is ample evidence that this Administration needs to face deep scrutiny. The lies we have heard, the chaos in governance, and the looming questions about ties with Russia - itself a major player in Syria - demand that the press treat this latest action with healthy skepticism. Perhaps it was the right thing to do. Perhaps a strong and wise policy will emerge. But that judgement is still definitely hanging in the balance. 

The number of members of the press who have lauded the actions last night as "presidential" is concerning. War must never be considered a public relations operation. It is not a way for an Administration to gain a narrative. It is a step into a dangerous unknown and its full impact is impossible to predict, especially in the immediate wake of the first strike.

Bombing Of Syria Was Just A Trump Publicity Stunt

(Cartoon image is by Paul Zanetti at cagle.com.)

The Trump administration is trying to pass off its bombing of a Syrian air base as a humanitarian action to prevent Syria from gassing the rebels that oppose them. The more I think about the bombing, the more convinced I am that this is simply not true. The bombing was just a publicity stunt by the Trump administration.

Why do I say that? Consider how the bombing (by cruise missiles) was done. The Trump administration warned the Russians in advance of the bombing, knowing full well that Russia would warn its ally Syria. And that's exactly what happened. Both Russia and Syria used the warning to send both personnel and planes to a safe location. The only planes damaged in the bombing were six that were being repaired (and could not be removed).

The runway for the base was not bombed at all -- and according to observers, was back in operation the next day. How can you take an air base out of commission without bombing and destroying its runways? You can't. This tells me that Trump never intended to destroy the air base (or he would have targeted the runways with at least a few of the 59 missiles fired). It was all just an exercise in political theater (i.e., a publicity stunt). A few buildings were destroyed, but the base is still operational (and Syria has the same military capability it had before the bombing).

Why would Trump waste 59 cruise missiles on a publicity stunt? Because his job approval rating has been falling like a rock -- and currently rests in the mid-thirties (lower than any modern president in his first months in office) -- and that is unacceptable for a narcissist like Trump.

He could straighten out his chaotic White House, or alter his policies to more closely align with the wishes of the general population, but those would take time -- and he would have to admit that he's the architect of his own dismal approval ratings (something he seems incapable of doing).

The far easier way was to take military action against a supposed enemy (even though Syria has done nothing to endanger the United States). By sending Haley to the United Nations to claim the U.S. was acting out of a humanitarian concern, and then firing some missiles at Syria, Trump is able to pose as a warrior president -- a leader who worries about the Syrian people (the same people he is denying entry into the United States as refugees).

When presidents take military action, the country tends to unify behind them -- at least for a while. That was true when Bush I attacked Iraq, when Bush II attacked Afghanistan, and when Obama sent Navy Seals to take out Osama bin Laden. Trump is hoping that his publicity stunt will have the same effect, and that he can get his job approval up (without doing anything to justify it).

None of this should surprise us. Trump has always been more about show than substance (or as we say in Texas -- all hat and no cattle). Trump is a poser, and now he's posing as a military leader. I hope most Americans are smart enough to see through it.

Trump Just Made The World A More Dangerous Place

The picture above is of the Sharyat Air Field in Syria. This is the Syrian air base that Trump spent over $80 million to attack (59 missiles at $1.4 million each). Trump used the alleged attack on Syrian rebels using poison gas as the excuse for that attack. I suspect he just needed something to make himself look better (since his job approval is at a record low).

The question now is -- did the attack actually accomplish anything? The Trump administration says it did serious damage to the base and to Syrian war planes -- hurting the ability of Syria to launch more attacks using poison gas. There is no doubt that the base suffered serious damage -- 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles will do that. Far less likely is that any Syrian planes were destroyed, or that their ability to launch further attacks was hurt.

The Russians say only 6 Syrian planes were damaged -- the planes that were being repaired and could not fly. They are probably right about that. We know that the United States warned the Russians (who have planes at that base) that the attack would happen -- and since Russia is a strong ally of Syrian president Assad, it is very likely that they passed that warning on to the Syrians (allowing them to get their planes out before the attack).

But while the attack didn't do much to hurt Syria's ability to fly missions against the rebels, it really wasn't designed to do that. It was designed to make Trump look like a strong president (and improve his approval rating). We'll have to see if that was accomplished in polls to be done in the coming weeks.

One thing was accomplished though. Trump's attack made the world a more dangerous place. That's because the Russians retaliated by stopping the communications program between the American and Russian forces in the area -- designed to keep those forces from accidentally attacking each other or shooting down each others' planes. This was the program used to notify the Russians that the attack was coming.

This makes it much more likely that a Russian plane will be shot down by an American, or that an American plane will be shot down by a Russian. What happens if either of those possibilities occurs? That's a scary thought, since both countries have narcissistic presidents who can't admit they made a mistake and won't want to be seen as backing down. Could the egos of these two men engage both countries in a shooting war between them in Syria/Iraq -- which could then spread to other areas of the world?

Trump did accomplish one thing with his attack. He made the world a more dangerous place.

Trump Secretly Sent Hundreds More Troops To Iraq/Syria

(This photo of U.S. troops in Syria is from voiceofdetroit.net.)

Did you know that the United States recently sent 400 Marines to fight in Syria, and 300 more soldiers to fight in Iraq. Probably not, because it was done in secret by the Trump administration. Trump sent those troops without telling the press, the American people, or even Congress. We still would not know if a congressman on the House Armed Services Committee had not asked General Joesph Votel a point blank question -- and rather than get in trouble for lying to Congress, Votel told the truth. He also admitted the Trump administration is currently considering sending even more U.S. troops to those two countries.

The Trump administration has taken the position that announcing troop increases violates some kind of military "security". That's patently ridiculous. Announcing the size of the u.S. troop commitment doesn't give any tactical advantage to the enemy. It does however, let the American people know the extent to which the government is sending young Americans into harm's way. And it gives the people of this country the information they need to judge the efficacy of their government.

That means the United States now has at least 5,700 troops in Iraq and Syria -- and that number doesn't count the more than 1,000 "temporary" troops assigned to that war zone (who aren't counted because their mission is supposedly for 6 months or less).

Add to this 6,700 minimum troop level the 8,400 troops the U.S. still has in Afghanistan, and you realize that the United States still has more than 15,000 troops waging war in the Middle East region -- a war that has been going on for more than 15 years now (since October of 2001).

A reasonable person could conclude that any war that couldn't be won in 15 years probably can't be won at all. But reason is not something that's very popular with our narcissistic leader. He seems to be falling into the same type of fallacious thinking that infected the presidency of Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam War -- the thinking that said if you just keep sending more and more troops to the war, you will eventually reach a level that will allow you to win that war. It didn't work in Vietnam, and it has no better chance to work in the Middle East.

Our government has labeled the wars in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan as a "war on terror". That's just not true. You can't win a war against terrorism by using troops to take and hold territory. The terrosists will just melt away and fight somewhere else in the future. They have already shown they don't need to hold territory to commit terrorist acts. There are better ways to fight terrorism -- by using diplomacy, intelligence, and law enforcement.

We will never defeat terrorism by using our military forces, and are very unlikely to even hold the ground they have taken (unless we are willing to leave troops in those countries in perpetuity). We need to stop this madness now -- before our 15,000 troop commitment to eternal war grows larger and larger trying to fight a war that can't be won.Unfortunately, most of our elected leaders in Washington are not bright enough to realize that.

The U.S. Has Met Its Quota Of 10,000 Syrian Refugees

(This photo of Syrian refugees is from Forward.com.)

Last September, President Obama promised that the United States would accept 10,000 Syrian refugees. That was a rather pathetic goal, since those refugees were created in large part because of American foreign policy and military actions -- but at least we have achieved the goal. White House advisors said the 10,000th Syrian refugee arrived in the U.S. yesterday. About 80% of the arriving refugees have been women and children.

The four states receiving the most refugees from Syria are California, Michigan, Arizona, and Texas. Those last three states all have Republican governors who had declared they would not let the Syrian refugees into their state. Of course, that was nothing but political theater. Those governors knew they did not have the authority to do such a ridiculous thing. They were just playing to the teabaggers that elected them.

Even though the United States has accepted only a fraction of the number of Syrian refugees that other Western nations have admitted, it has been a controversy in this country. That's because the the Republicans (and their presidential candidate) have opted to base their campaigns on fear by trying to demonize the refugees. They claim the United States doesn't have a good vetting process in place to insure the refugees are not terrorists. That is just not true.

Here is the very tough vetting process a refugee must go through before entering the U.S.: