Sh*t Just Got Real for President Trump
Donald Trump just received one of those unhappy reminders this week that life is not a reality television show. While the Commander in Chief was busy whining about the Clintons again on Twitter, several things happened in the real world that look as though they’re going to require a presidential touch. By that I mean that these events are so important that they necessitate extremely sophisticated and delicate handling, since each of them could lead to war if not handled properly. Sophistication and delicacy are clearly not our new president’s strong points, so hopefully someone besides Jared Kushner steps in to give him some advice.
Assad Committed Another War Atrocity
Surprise, surprise. Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad — potentially emboldened by the flattering things Trump has been saying about him — decided on Tuesday to drop bombs full of sarin gas on some starving civilians.
Trump seems shocked that this happened. Unfortunately, he shouldn’t be. War correspondent Dexter Filkins, author of the epic, The Forever War, wrote yesterday:
The trouble, of course, was that while Assad may indeed have been killing isis, he was also killing Syrian civilians — and so prolifically that most Western governments, including the United States, long ago severed diplomatic relations with Assad’s government and called on Assad to step down. Most notoriously, in 2013, the Assad regime was accused by Western governments of using poison gas in the Damascus suburb of East Ghouta, an attack that killed at least fourteen hundred people and wounded more than three thousand, most of them civilians.
In 2013, President Obama considered sending in troops. Assad had crossed the “red line” in using chemical weapons. But in the end, the president decided against a large military action because the concurrent risks of toppling the Assad regime were too great. Multiple terrorist groups, ISIS and Al Qaeda included, would fight to take control of the vacuum left in Assad’s place.
So Obama instead won a promise from the Syrian dictator that he’d get rid of the rest of his chemical weapons. It seemed like the best option in a pool of really shitty ones.
Well, Assad sort of kept his promise. Until yesterday, when he apparently ordered a sarin-gas attack in Idlib Province which killed hundreds of people and wounded thousands more.
Now, Trump is going to have to do something about this. Something other than blame Obama, which was, of course, his first reaction upon receiving the news. So far, “Trump’s comment put forward no clear policy or planned response…” writes Filkins. It only threatens a knee-jerk military strike. Which is probably the one thing we should not do.
So this is scary. Trump’s not off to a good start. And Syria is not his only (international) problem.
North Korea Throwing Jabs
When you talk tough and people don’t buy it, sometimes they test you. By punching you in the face, for instance, to see what you’ll do about it. It appears that leaders around the world aren’t buying Trump’s phony tough-guy talk, and are beginning to throw some jabs in his direction.
I say this because around the time Assad was gassing his own countrymen, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, using money that’s supposed to feed his people, fired a scud missile towards Japan. This was a message, being as it was on the eve of Trump’s meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Now Trump has to deal with this potentially-massive issue, too.
So, what’s his response? Well, it’s a dangerous and confusing one, at best. Shadowy Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, a man who doesn’t think he should have to tell the media anything he does despite the fact that he holds one of the top three most important jobs in the world and has the power to directly affect all of our lives, issued this statement: “The United States has spoken enough about North Korea.” OK, thanks Rex.
Yesterday, the Trump administration said that, “The clock has now run out, and all options are on the table.” This is serious, scary language. One could imagine words like these causing a maniacal North Korean dictator do something drastic.
So are we going to war? There are 28,000 American soldiers on the border of North Korea, all of whom are directly in harm’s way if Kim Jong Un decides to do something stupid.
Are we preparing a pre-emptive strike against North Korea?
Who knows!? Our new State Department apparently believes that nuclear war is NOT an important enough topic for the public to get their panties all up in a knot about. Rex Tillerson, despite having no foreign policy experience whatsoever, will handle everything. It’s cool.
Plus, they have Jared Kushner.
