We begin today’s roundup with The New York Times and it’s analysis of Donald Trump’s silence on cogent Syria policy:
Presidents have an obligation to explain military operations to the American people and the world, and, when possible, most begin making their argument well before they take action. In Mr. Trump’s case, the need for clarity is even greater given that the attack on Thursday, in retaliation for President Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons on civilians, was a reversal of the position he campaigned on just months ago.
Now that Mr. Trump has ordered a strike against the Assad government, how far is he prepared to go to end the six-year-old civil war? What does the operation say about his willingness to use force beyond Syria?
Eugene Robinson lays out his argument against Trump’s missile strikes:
[H]is decision to launch the cruise missile strike is being applauded by foreign policy traditionalists of both parties — the establishment figures who gave us the disastrous war in Iraq — as a show of U.S. “strength” and “resolve.” That should worry us all.
Red lines and symbolic displays of force do not constitute a plan. I have long opposed U.S. military intervention in Syria because I did not see how such action — within the parameters of the possible — would make the situation better. I still don’t.
A punitive strike to deter Assad from using chemical weapons does nothing to protect the millions of desperate civilians who remain vulnerable to conventional weapons wielded by the Syrian government, such as deadly barrel bombs. Indeed, Assad reportedly made a point of having warplanes take off from Sharyat on bombing runs soon after the missiles landed; while the base suffered considerable damage, runways were left intact. Civilians are also under attack by Russian forces, the Islamic State and various jihadist and non-jihadist rebel groups.
Damon Linker at The Week takes on the glee in the media about Syria intervention:
The establishment's reaction has been uniformly negative about [Obama’s Syria] decision, which is a major reason why there was such an outpouring of joy and relief when President Trump reversed course and did what Obama had steadfastly refused to do for over five years: target assets of the Assad government. If there was a criticism to be heard, it was that Trump's missile strike was too limited in scope. Never mind that neither the Trump administration nor any prominent analyst presented a convincing strategy for using American bombs to bring the civil war to a sustainably peaceful conclusion. All that mattered was that the U.S. finally did something, and that this something would continue and expand. "More, please!" — that's what most of the commentary has amounted to.
I'm sorry, but this is madness.
Margaret Hartmann, meanwhile, highlights the hypocrisy of his team painting Trump as a straight-shooter versus his total silence on Syria:
There is a phrase that the Trump team is fond of deploying when they don’t care to explain their bosses’ most outrageous, befuddling remarks. “I think Mr. Trump speaks for Mr. Trump. He makes every major decision in this campaign,” then-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said back in June. “He speaks the way he does in very plain words, in very plain English, and he gets his message across.” [...] White House officials might be right about letting Trump speak for himself, as he may have offered the best description of the Trump Doctrine a day before the strike on Syria. “I don’t have to have one specific way, and if the world changes, I go the same way, I don’t change,” he said. “Well, I do change and I am flexible, and I’m proud of that flexibility.”
Turning to the topic of infrastructure, The New York Times takes on Trump’s lies:
It’s not enough that the Trump administration has no coherent plan to rebuild the country as the president repeatedly promised to do. It is also working against useful projects that would actually improve the nation’s needy roads, bridges and other public works. [...]
The clearest sign of the hollowness of Mr. Trump’s trillion-dollar promise came in the budget released last month. It ends subsidies for Amtrak’s long-distance train service, which will hurt the most in the parts of the country Mr. Trump promised to help. It gets rid of popular federal transportation programs like “Tiger” grants that provide money to cities and states to repair and expand highways, bridges and transit systems. Many of the programs Mr. Trump would cut were authorized by Congress with large bipartisan majorities.
Lauren Gardner at POLITICO:
President Donald Trump is counting on his $1 trillion infrastructure proposal to produce the kind of bipartisan legislative victory that has eluded him on health care and pretty much everything else.
Instead, he’s running into familiar roadblocks: suspicious Democrats, a divided GOP and questions about the math.
And, on a final note, Bess Levin at Vanity Fair previews the battle ahead:
Unfortunately for the Trump Grille proprietor turned 45th president, tax reform is not a cake walk. Nor are Democrats, whose favor Trump is half-heartedly attempting to curry, in any mood to help the president redistribute the nation’s wealth upward.