Donald Trump has put his critics in a difficult position.
And indeed, he and his advisers probably set out to do just that as they prepared to conduct airstrikes in Syria this week.
You’d be forgiven for suggesting that hitting a Russian client state with 59 Tomahawk missiles is one way to “prove” to the American people that you’re not a puppet of the Kremlin. And you’d also be forgiven for noting that the timing seems particularly convenient.
Throw in the fact that Devin Nunes – who was quickly becoming a liability for Trump as opposed to an asset – recused himself from the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Moscow just hours before the President ordered airstrikes, and you’ve got yourself a pretty compelling argument for the contention that the White House used the chemical attacks in Syria as a (literal) smoke screen.
But here’s where it gets messy. Above, we said “you’d be forgiven for suggesting…” In fact however, you probably won’t be “forgiven for suggesting.” Because you’re not supposed to “suggest” anything when “little babies” have been gassed to death.
And while we agree that at the end of the day the story here is a horrific chemical attack, don’t lose sight of the context. Find more on this below.
Horrific images were not the only reason military action made sense for Trump. Whatever his concern for the people of Syria – a country whose refugees would not be able to enter the United States for 120 days under Trump’s latest travel ban proposal – he has been eager to show a clear victory more than two months into his tumultuous young presidency.
A strike against Syria could help him demonstrate independence from Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, whose alleged efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential race have proved a major distraction. And Trump wants to show that he is a tougher and stronger leader than Obama, who received scathing criticism when he drew a “red line” with Syria over its use of chemical weapons and then declined to act when President Bashar al-Assad bounded over it.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Friday questioned Trump’s “24-hour pivot on Syria policy,” noting that until Assad’s regime launched its chemical attack, Trump had not made Syria a priority. White House press secretary Sean Spicer had told reporters last week that the United States had to accept the “political reality” of Assad’s grip on power.
“There is no strategy on Syria,” Murphy said. “He clearly made this decision based off an emotional reaction to the images on TV, and it should worry everyone about the quixotic nature of this administration’s foreign policy and their potential disdain for the warmaking authority of the United States Congress.”
Throughout the week, Trump’s public remarks placed a special emphasis on the youngest victims. “When you kill innocent children, innocent babies, babies, little babies, with a chemical gas that is so lethal – people were shocked to hear what gas it was,” Trump said Wednesday afternoon in the Rose Garden, where he appeared at a news conference with King Abdullah II of Jordan. “That crosses many, many lines, beyond a red line – many, many lines.”
On Thursday, when a subdued Trump addressed the nation, he spoke of “beautiful babies” cruelly murdered, declaring, “No child of God should ever suffer such horror.”
[…]
Thursday’s strike also raised several uncomfortable, still-unanswered questions: Was Trump motivated to attack Syria in part because Obama never did? Was he driven by a need for a political victory, at home and abroad? And what is the administration’s long-term strategy and goal in Syria?
Anyone who believes for a second that he sent missiles into that airbase as a retaliation or warning for the death of those “babies, innocent babies, babies, little babies” is a fool. Don’t impose feelings of compassion and horror on the same man who lives for revenge and power, a man who will do literally anything to alter and influence an investigation into his connections with Russia and Putin.
Clearly you see the minimal damage done to the airbase; they were bombing the same location in the city less than 48 hours later. Trump spent 80 million dollars to cover his ass. I know it is hard to imagine that he seized the opportunity to use to his benefit but that is how he thinks and how he has lived his entire life. There has been years and years and hundreds, maybe thousands, of photos and videos and the suffering and destruction and much of it very graphic and sorrowful and he has seen the same we have all seen, probably more since TV is his lifeline.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that while he may have winced at the terrible scenes, he did not take the action he took because of “those innocent babies”! He is seeking to change the “ratings” he hears on TV about him.
“No child of God should ever suffer such horror.”
Which God? You know, because these victims probably live within a religion different than that of President Showbiz. I’m just guessing, considering they hail from a place that Showbiz has deemed a place too unsavory to take refugees from because of the religion.