Syria’s murderous dictator Bashar Assad apparently has had chemical weapons all along, but until this past week he has refrained from using nerve agents such as sarin. The Donald, who four years ago urged President Obama not to attack Syria after a similar chemical attack, says that this one crossed a line. And he blamed Obama, who after that attack four years ago negotiated a deal with Russia to have Syria get rid of all its nerve agents, which unless Assad recently acquired new ones didn’t happen, yet for those four years Assad didn’t use whatever nerve agents he might have retained.
Trump says his opinion of Assad now has changed. The recent massacres in Aleppo apparently weren’t enough. Of course, Trump’s great leadership wasn’t helping there, anyway. And of course, the civilians trying to flee Assad’s carnage didn’t deserve refuge in the United States. No word on whether that has changed. Which likely is a statement in itself.
This is what happens when you have ignorant amateurs running foreign and military policy. And now there may be outright war. People who have no idea what they’re doing are supposed to figure out how to get rid of Assad, who is supposed to replace him without making things as bad or worse, how such action won’t lead to an even worse humanitarian crisis, what happens to the warring rival opposition groups, not to mention Syria’s neighbors, and oh yeah—ISIS.
There’s no good answer to Syria. There never has been. Sending in arms inevitably leads to some of those arms ending up in the hands of bad guys. But the ignorant, incompetent amateurs running this administration will figure it all out. Just as they figured out a new strategy on March 30:
The Trump administration doubled down Thursday on prioritizing the fight against ISIS over ending the Syrian civil war and getting rid of its main protagonist, President Bashar al-Assad -- a suggestion that was swiftly criticized by hawks on the Hill.
Indicating a possible shift in US policy on the war in Syria from the days of the Obama administration, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on a trip to Turkey that the "longer-term status of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian people."
And in New York, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley was even stronger about the Trump administration's decision not to push for Assad's departure. "Our priority is no longer to sit and focus on getting Assad out," Haley told wire reporters Thursday, according to AFP.
A strategy, by the way, that just happened to align with Assad’s chief ally, Vladimir Putin. But Assad apparently had been sitting on his nerve agents for years. Then just days after the Trump crew announced that getting rid of Assad no longer was a priority, he used them.
Maybe the Oval Office isn’t the place for on-the-job training.