Please forgive my tardiness; this column concerns the week-old, American-led coalition missile strike on Syria.
Little time was wasted before retaliating against the Bashar al-Assad regime over its use last week of chemical weapons, sending bombs raining down at a former missile base - some 15 miles west of Homs.
That's where the regime is believed to keep chemical-weapon precursors stockpiled -- in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention.
According to Pentagon officials, a number of facilities were struck -- a chemical weapons storage facility; a chemical weapons equipment storage and crucial command post near Homs; and a scientific research facility in Damascus, believed to be key in the production of chemical and biological weapons.
Scant days before the chemical-weapons attack by the Syrian regime, President Trump had announced the U.S. would withdraw from Syria, but unlike his predecessor Barack Obama, Trump kept his word when his “red line” was crossed.
Obama feared for his legacy, the Iran nuclear deal, and sold out the Syrian rebels, his red-lines were meaningless and everyone -- friend and foe -- knew it. Now, Assad and his enablers cannot use chemical weapons without fear of retaliation.
Syrian rebels and neighboring countries know which side we’re on. - Obada Alstof, 21, of Homs, an anti-Assad activist, stated: “We hope for the future that strikes will expand to include all the Syrian regime and its supported militias’ military locations," Alstof continued, "because the regime and its allies are committing massacres against the civilians every day.”
Retired Marine Corps Lt. Col. Oliver North said the coalition attack on Syrian military and chemical weapons facilities sends an "important message" to not only the Assad government but also Iran and Russia.
North said the two nations are "enablers" of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and that by America joining with allies France and Great Britain, the attack illustrates allied resolve.
Here’s the real end goal.
“The U.S. will push to accelerate the Geneva process to reach a political solution in Syria,” Ayman Abdel Nour, founder of Syrian Christians for Peace, and a key player in Washington and opposition dialogue said regarding the conflict. “Russia asked to reduce the strike in order to keep its face, in exchange to push for a real political solution, which requires Assad to be out.”
Trump’s approach to Syria reveals contradictions. The president is a realist who believes that international relations are both highly competitive and zero-sum. Yet the rationale for the missile strikes was not realist but humanitarian and legalistic: Syria’s illegal use of chemical weapons against its own people demanded or at least justified the Western attacks.
From a realistic standpoint, there is no vital interest in the Syrian civil war, other than denying Russia and Iran influence in the region.
Many prominent conservatives in the media and Trump supporters condemned the strike, among them Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Michael Savage, who tweeted that "sad warmongers are hijacking our nation" in the wake of the strike.
Why risk war with Russia in Syria, when, by our own inaction during this seven-year civil war, we have shown we have no vital interest there? And surely we have no interest in Syria so crucial as to justify a war with a nuclear-armed Russia.
Trump allowed his revulsion at the awful pictures of dead children, allegedly gassed, to impel him to threaten military action almost certain to result in more dead children.
Emotions should not be allowed to overrule what the president has thought and expressed many times: while the outcome of Syria’s civil war may mean everything to Assad, and much to Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Israel, it means comparatively little to a USA 5,000 miles away.
We cannot forever fight other peoples’ wars without ending up on the same ash heap of history as the other world powers before us.
As for the political future of Syria, it is not vital to us and not ours to determine. And the efforts of others to have us come fight their wars, while understandable, need to be resisted.
Surely the populist Trump can read the nation’s tea leaves; they don’t want more war in the Middle East. It is refreshing to me, however, that our President follows through on his promises, which Donald J. Trump seems to do, consistently.
The President’s announcement of the strike declared its limited goal.
"America does not seek an indefinite presence in Syria, under no circumstances," Trump said in his address. "The purpose of our actions tonight is to establish a strong deterrent against the production, spread and use of chemical weapons."
Among the reasons the Republican Party nominated Trump and the nation elected him was that he promised to take us out and keep us out of wars like the one in Syria.
Let’s all hope this strike doesn’t represent an escalation of American involvement in Syria.
Many in Washington, like Sen. John McCain, want to support the rebels and remove the brutal dictator Assad, but Trump-knowing the U.S. is weary of the intractable Middle East conflict, wants to concentrate on domestic and trade issues, avoiding never-ending conflicts such as Iraq and Afghanistan.
Perhaps my favorite media observation on this strike and its aftermath came from an ironic source, narcissistic media star Geraldo Rivera, who declared that Trump deserves credit for his leadership on the issue, saying that Americans must "rebel against the tabloid crap" like the Stormy Daniels allegations.
Amen.
