Trump Blunders In Syria

Dateline Washington DC, May 2013. President Obama prepares to attack Syria after Bashar al-Assad allegedly crossed his redline by reportedly gassing his own citizens. Then citizen Trump strongly objected and severally tweeted :

“Obama wants to unilaterally put a no-fly zone in Syria to protect Al-Qaeda Islamists. Syria is not our problem” – 29 May 2013

“We should stay the hell out of Syria, the "rebels" are just as bad as the current regime. WHAT WILL WE GET FOR OUR LIVES AND $ BILLIONS? ZERO” – 16 June 2013

“Remember, all these ‘freedom fighters’ in Syria want to fly planes into our buildings” – 28 Aug 2013

“What will we get for bombing Syria besides more debt and a possible long term conflict? Obama needs Congressional approval” 29 Aug 2013

“The terrorists in Syria are calling themselves REBELS and getting away with it because our leaders are so completely stupid!”- 6th Sept 2013.

“President Obama, do not attack Syria. There is no upside and tremendous downside. Save your "powder" for another (and more important) day!” – 7th Sept 2013.

Fast forward 4 years later with Trump now in the White House and faced with the same situation. America’s hypocrite-in-chief did exactly what he repeatedly upbraided Obama not to do.

Without proper investigation, without a UN resolution and most importantly without Congressional approval, he fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Assad’s Syria - a nation that neither attacked nor threatened United States.

That was in flagrant violation of both America’s War Powers Act and her constitution which require Congressional authorization to wage war.

Trump administration officials and his Beltway cheerleaders insist the missile attack was measured military action, not an act of war. I doubt they would feel the same way if another country fired 59 missiles into U.S.

Ordinarily, such a chemical weapons attack should have been followed by proper investigation. UN/OPCW experts would visit the site, interview survivors, collect samples and other forensic evidence to determine who was responsible… or if indeed there was a chemical weapons attack.

None of these happened. Sitting comfy in DC, the Beltway “Assad must go” crowd determined with absolute certainty within 24 hours that the much vilified Syrian dictator was responsible.

Twenty four hours later, the Donald fired a barrage of Tomahawk missiles at Syria’s Shayrat airbase from where the sarin gas attack purportedly emanated.

Why the undue rush to judgment and hurry to punish Assad? It’s almost as if America does not want a proper investigation, as it might implicate culprits other than their much vilified bogeyman – Bashar Al-Assad.

After all both ISIS and the Al-Qaeda linked Syrian rebels are also known to have cornered some of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles .

What more, Obama admin repeatedly assured us that its 2013 deal with Putin eliminated Syria’s chemical weapons.

John Kerry, Obama’s then Secretary of State declared - “We struck a deal where we got 100 percent of the chemical weapons out.” In 2015 Obama himself asserted - “Assad gave up his chemical weapons, those have been eliminated.”

Many of the Beltway pundits cheering Trump’s reckless hasty response, are the same sophists who despite over 30,000 Jihad terror attacks since 9/11, repeatedly urge us not to jump to conclusions after each terror attack.

Then they vainly search for other politically correct scapegoats – right-wing extremists, poverty, mental illness, global warming etc.

But after the Khan Shaykhun gas attack they readily jumped to conclusion and demanded immediate response.

These war mongering liars are basically the same people who sold us the fake news that Saddam Hussein had WMDs as a false pretext to invade Iraq.

At the UN General Assembly, Colin Powell, then U.S. Secretary of state glibly showed satellite photos allegedly of Saddam’s mobile chemical weapons labs and WMD stockpiles, which were not found after the invasion.

Nicky Haley, current U.S. ambassador to UN did the same absurd dance at the General Assembly as she also showed photos of child victims of Assad’s alleged gas attack.

In the run up to the U.S. war against Libya; Obama, Hilary and Sarkozy similarly told lies about Gaddafi’s intended massacre of Benghazi, even though U.S. Defense intelligencedisagreed with that assessment.

Both Amnesty international and Human rights watch also debunked planted media stories that Gaddafi handed condoms to his soldiers to go on a rape spree.

Yet in the recent Syria gas attack we are expected to trust the hurried judgement of the same establishment frauds who lied America into war against Libya and Iraq.

With Assad’s retake of Palmyra and Allepo last year, the DC “Assad must go” crowd aren’t happy with the continued gains of Damascus against the so-called “moderate rebels.”

Hence they had to act fast before any info came out that contradicted their dubious self-serving narrative.

Conspiracy theories that the Khan Shaykhun gas attack was a false flag operation to ramp up pressure on Assad and poor cold water on Trump’s intended but much pooh-poohed rapprochement with Putin, don’t seem so far-fetched after all.

It appears Trump succumbed to such pressures to stave off the persistent but unsubstantiated allegations of his campaign’s collusion with Russia.

His disingenuous excuse that women and children were killed holds no water. Over 300,000 lives have been lost in Syria’s 6-year civil war. What’s the big deal about another 80 in the Idlib gas attack?

In the week preceding the sarin gas attack, US-led forces killed over 200 civilians in airstrikes against ISIS in Mosul.

That’s more than twice as many victims as in the Syrian gas attack. But it was hardly mentioned by the same lamestream Western media that wailed loudly about civilian atrocities when Syrian/Russian forces battled to reclaim Allepo last year.

What more, US airforce just dropped a weapon of mass destruction, MOAB in Afghanistan.

And we are supposed to believe this WMD with mile wide blast radius and much greater shock wave only killed ISIS jihadis hiding in caves & tunnels, which incidentally were built by CIA for the Afghan Jihad against the defunct USSR.

It would appear that killing civilians with guns, air strikes, bombs, artillery shells etc are all acceptable, but not killing with sarin gas.

It was particularly painful to watch and read several otherwise respectable conservative commentators contort themselves and spin Trump’s brazen illegality as some sort of show of strength to America’s adversaries – China, Russia, Iran, North Korea.

Why not demonstrate the show of strength against the rival powers themselves?

How about air strikes taking out the nuclear/ICBM facilities of Iran’s “death to America” Mullahs who not only repeatedly threaten America and harass U.S. ships in the Arabian gulf, but have the blood of hundreds of Americans on their hands?

How about firing those 60 missiles at Kim Jong-Un’s North Korea, which also repeatedly threatens America and condemns whole families to concentration camps where they are starved to death… including the women and children Trump cares so much about.

How about asserting U.S. right of navigation in the international waters of South China sea Beijing illegally claims, by sailing American naval ships through the area? Or flying over the artificial islands China created in the same South China sea, to demonstrate America does not recognize Beijing’s illicit claims on international air space.

Nope, Trump’s illegal attack on Syria was not a show of strength, on the contrary it screamed weakness and cowardice. It was akin to a schoolyard bully beating upon a scrawny little kid who can’t fight back, rather than take on mates who would.

That’s why in the aftermath of Trump’s missile attacks on Syria, U.S. had to drastically reduce airstrikesagainst ISIS , because American air force jets dared not fly over large parts of Syria for fear of being taken down by Russia/Syrian anti-aircraft missiles. Show of strength indeed!!

Was it really worth it? Unduly antagonizing Russia to appease the Russophobic mob in DC, only to compromise the crucial war against ISIS, which is a clear & present danger to America and the entire West.

President Trump must get his foreign policy priorities right and live up to his electoral rhetoric in which he repeatedly condemned undue U.S. military intervention in the Middle east that worsened conflicts in the region.

As the most powerful nation on the planet, United States must endeavor to use its awesome military power wisely for global good in her own interest. Rather than allow a narrow minded cabal with petty obsessions, abuse U.S. military power to cause more problems as in Iraq and Libya.

Nafata Bamaguje