‘Wag the Dog’ — Trump’s Sudden Syrian ‘About Face’ Remains Highly Suspect
Was U.S. missile attack on Al-Shayrat Airfield a legitimate response to genocide, or craven attempt to deflect from ‘Russiagate’ scandal?
“MOSCOW — Russia on Friday condemned a U.S. missile strike against Syrian government forces as an attack on its ally and said it was suspending an agreement to minimize the risk of in-flight incidents between U.S. and Russian aircraft operating over Syria.
Even as Russian officials expressed hope that the strike against Syrian President Bashad al-Assad’s forces would not lead to an irreversible breakdown in U.S. relations with Moscow, the Kremlin’s decision to suspend the 2015 memorandum of understanding on the air operations immediately raised tensions in the skies over Syria.” (Washington Post)
Naturally, we could well-expect faux outrage and indignation from Russia, over the launch of 59-cruise missiles, targeting the Syrian air base from which was launched a lethal gas attack on civilians, in one of the last rebel-held enclaves in Syria. I say “faux” because the Russians were warned before the missiles struck and, thus, were able to protect some aircraft and most Russian and Syrian personnel, so that few human deaths and questionable damage to materiel resulted. We are still awaiting the formal Bomb Damage Assessment (BDA) and imagery from the Pentagon, but it appears that the damage inflicted on the airfield did not permanently take it out, nor delay (for long) normal flight operations from there, as its runways were barely touched, according to most media accounts.
I remain convinced that this little “dog and pony show” which represents a 180-degree reversal from earlier positions espoused by Donald Trump,…as recent as a week ago, and going back years (in multiple tweets relative to earlier chemical attacks), defies any convincing conclusion that this latest, much smaller attack, was a sufficient “humanitarian” catalyst for such a dramatic change in policy or direction.
Moreover, this has all the hallmarks of a tacit understanding— by Trump and Putin — that their long term “relationship” was being badly damaged and undermined by Trump’s falling poll numbers, just as Congress was about to take a two-week recess, with only a contentious SCOTUS confirmation win to show for his first three-months in office,…as well as the constant media focus on the ‘Russiagate’ cyber-spying scandal and increasing evidentiary linkage to Team Trump’s possible collusion.
Frankly, I just don’t buy the (as yet unproven) claim that al-Assad (himself) ordered this Sarin gas attack; notably from a base shared by both al-Assad’s Syrian and Putin’s Russian warplanes, nor does it make much strategic or tactical sense (to me) that al-Assad — already holding a winning hand — had all that much to gain by using chemical warfare. Especially after the 2013 use of such weapons nearly led to his removal from power,…if only the Republican Congress had actually done its constitutional job, and approved President Obama’s 2013 request for a new AUMF relative to Syria.
“Something should happen.” That’s what President Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, on the way to a first-ever meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. This was in response to the Sarin gas attack, almost immediately attributed to Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad. Indeed, a rather curious interventionist ‘epiphany’ for a President Trump, who had — for years — castigated President Obama, and consistently advised a “hands off” policy, relative to any American military action in Syria,…in the far more deadly 2013 chemical attack, and had also demanded that Obama seek congressional approval before taking any such action!
Nevertheless, a newly “solemn” humanitarian President Trump decided to authorize a massive cruise missile attack on the Syrian airfield,…without any such consultations or approval from Congress. And now, we are left scratching our heads about this dramatic reversal; wondering about the many supportive remarks coming from the usual Neocon voices,…from John McCain and Lindsey Graham, to Marco Rubio; three of Trump’s most vocal critics (in the past), relative to his shameful pandering to Putin’s aggression.
“Trump immediately won plaudits from Official Washington, especially from neoconservatives who have been trying to wrestle control of his foreign policy away from his nationalist and personal advisers since the days after his surprise victory on Nov. 8.
There is also an internal dispute over the intelligence. On Thursday night, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. intelligence community assessed with a “high degree of confidence” that the Syrian government had dropped a poison gas bomb on civilians in Idlib province.
But a number of intelligence sources have made contradictory assessments, saying the preponderance of evidence suggests that Al Qaeda-affiliated rebels were at fault, either by orchestrating an intentional release of a chemical agent as a provocation or by possessing containers of poison gas that ruptured during a conventional bombing raid.” ~ Robert Parry (Consortiumnews)
While we don’t yet know whether last night’s missile strike was a “one off” message to Syria and Russia, or whether more military action is forthcoming — to oust the al-Assad regime (as many Neocons are now suggesting) — we can be QUITE CERTAIN that White House propaganda machinery is gearing up to cast President Trump as a “decisive leader.” A president unlike his “feckless” (remember that one…?) predecessor; willing and fully committed to resolving an ugly and dangerous international crisis.
However, I just cannot shake my own suspicion — of a man who is a proven pathological liar — that all of this is merely lethal ‘Wag the Dog’ theater, cynically designed to reverse his disastrous polling numbers, and divert media and public attention away from his many presidential failures and ongoing probes by two congressional committees (and the FBI) which may well lead to his eventual impeachment for treason, or other “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
