Get It Together<\/p>\n
The United States, the United Kingdom and France attacked Syria Friday night.\u00a0 We launched over one hundred and fifty missiles from ships and planes, attacking Syrian chemical weapons development and storage capacities.\u00a0Syria claims that half of the missiles were intercepted before they reached their target; they have advanced Russian made air-defense weapons.*<\/p>\n
Syria is a disaster.\u00a0It is in the end stages of a civil war against rebel militias, with the brutal Assad regime regaining power.\u00a0 Russia and Iran have committed weapons and troops to support Assad in his quest.\u00a0 Meanwhile, the United States is fighting and supporting the Kurds in the north and east as they complete the defeat of the Islamic State (ISIS).\u00a0 Turkey has moved into parts of Northern Syria, and has attacked both ISIS remnants and Kurds.\u00a0 And of course, the Israelis aren\u2019t far away, and have launched recent attacks into Syria as well.<\/p>\n
Assad has demonstrated a willingness to go to any length to survive.\u00a0 This includes using chemical weapons on both rebel militias, and civilians.\u00a0He has used Sarin nerve gas in the past, but this latest assault was with chlorine gas.\u00a0 Nikki Haley, US Ambassador to the United Nations, estimates Assad has used chemical weapons at least fifty times in the past six years.<\/p>\n
The Assad forces have also used barrel bombs dropped from helicopters on civilians, and have no compunction about shelling and bombing or starving any area where they find resistance, regardless of civilian casualties.<\/p>\n
So what is the Allied strategy for Syria?\u00a0 President Trump stated that this was a concerted effort, one that would be a continuing operation to make sure Assad didn\u2019t use chemicals again.\u00a0 Later, Secretary of Defense Mattis and General Dunford made it clear that our attack was a \u201cone-off\u201d mission.\u00a0 If Assad doesn\u2019t resort to chemical weapons, the Allies will leave him alone.<\/p>\n
The answer is there is no answer for Syria.\u00a0 Perhaps in President Obama\u2019s administration there was an opportunity to act (as the Russians ultimately did) and overthrow Assad.\u00a0 But the lessons of Iraq were clear to that administration:\u00a0 remove the dictator and beware of the forces that are unleashed.\u00a0 ISIS is but one example of what could happen.\u00a0 President Obama chose not to intervene in the region.<\/p>\n
So it\u2019s hard to blame the Trump Administration for not having their Syria policy together.\u00a0 It\u2019s a conundrum, perhaps without solution.\u00a0But the Administration could have at least coordinated the message between the President and the Generals. \u00a0The President intimated a long-term commitment to Syria (odd, as just a couple weeks ago he was talking about removing all US troops) while the Generals made it clear we don\u2019t plan on continued action, as long as Assad doesn\u2019t use his chemicals.<\/p>\n
And the President, who made a major part of his Presidential campaign about not telling adversaries what he planned to do, tweeted our missile plans out on Monday.\u00a0 Not only were the Syrians warned, they took the opportunity to move a significant amount of their weaponry onto Russian bases, where they would be shielded from Allied attacks.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t a case of \u201cWag the Dog,\u201d the 1990\u2019s movie where the President created a war to distract from his political woes at home.\u00a0 Chemical weapons use has been banned since the end of World War One; even in the extremes of World War Two neither side resorted to them.\u00a0 It is the one limited action the US and Allies can take:\u00a0 do whatever else you want but don\u2019t use chemicals.<\/p>\n
But the current internal US crisis makes our alliance a less formidable force. This Administration has an aura of confusion and incompetence.\u00a0 \u00a0Rebel or Assad; Syrian, Iranian, Kurdish, Turkish, Russian, British or French:\u00a0 it is hard to determine what the United States will do, and how committed it is to any strategy in the Middle East.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t just that the Administration speaks with multiple voices and messages; there is no clear plan of action, and the positions that should be communicating US views from the State Department have been left vacant.<\/p>\n
They need to get it together.<\/p>\n
*Note: US military states ALL \u00a0MISSILES hit their targets and all planes returned home safely \u00a0They also stated that Syrian defenses didn\u2019t respond until after the attack was over<\/p>\n
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