There were pictures in North American papers the other day of Trump and his key advisers in a small room at his Florida resort. The captions explained that they were being briefed on options in Syria. The question that has to be asked: Is a strike against one airfield any kind of solution?
Does the world really need tit-for-tat gamesmanship?
Is this a Trump era solution? Trump can bawl about babies being killed all he likes but babies have been routinely murdered in Syria for the past six years, to the despair of the world, and there is no permanent solution in sight.
Trump is an ass. He is being congratulated for 58 out of 59 Tomahawk missiles being able to find their general target area. And it only cost a little over a million (US dollars) for each missile. Based on the after pictures, Syrian Leader Bashar al-Assad could have the base operational again in about two weeks if he wants. Just one surgical nuclear weapon would have made the air base unusable for about 2000 years.
The difference is that between an admonition and a conviction.
Looking at all those rich white men (and one young and rich Trump relation) around that table makes you wonder who really made the decision? It was a bad decision in any event. It was made in retaliation and in anger and because they could.
Better people than Donald Trump and his Merry Men have addressed the Syrian situation and have been found wanting. When a dictator such as al-Assad spends his idle afternoons in Damascus thinking up new ways to kill his county’s people, there are no simple solutions. And having Vladimir Putin of Russia stick his oar into the desert sands of the Middle east is not exactly helping the problems.
But what is America doing on this Holy Crusade? If we heard Mr. Trump correctly last year, we thought he wanted nothing to do with the Middle East. And yet, he thinks he can bomb the ISIL brigands back to the Middle Ages. He just has no idea how to do that.
You would think that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson with his background with ExxonMobil could explain the politics of oil and the Middle East to him. Maybe Mr. Trump is more of a coal guy.
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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry
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