Paradigm Shift
After the missile strikes
When this happened……
….two major narratives bit the dust. First:
There has been an ongoing narrative that Trump was not just the circumstantial beneficiary of Russia’s Hilary-hate, but was an active solicitor of it. The usual explanation was that the unrevealed tax returns would show that Trump’s primary financial lender were Russian banks, and of course if most of your wealth was financed by Russian banks, which are of course controlled by the Russian leader (yes, questionable, but this made sense to some) then Trump was clearly a treasonous pawn of Putin.
Well, that one’s in shambles today.
The other narrative that bit it:
The situation in Syria is complex with a lot of moving parts. But a show of strength like the missile strikes cannot be seen in any other way than advancing the Muslim moving parts at the expense of the secularist moving parts. Now, not all those Muslim Moving Parts are good ones, not by a long shot; but Assad is a pure secularist, which is why the religious Muslims, both the positive forces and negative forces, oppose him.
Also, while watching coverage on CNN and MSNBC afterward, I note there’s obviously been a third paradigm shift on the part of the mainstream media. Three items scream out:
- There is universal comfort, if not praise, for Trump for applying military force in a way approved by the left (human rights) in a measured fashion. The assumption that Trump would “go big” in a situation like this, and cause more problems than he was responding to, is dead.
- There is now implicit admission that several Obama foreign policy priorities that were previously defended were now…..misguided. They are as follows: FIRST, that the failure to follow through on the “red line in the sand” that Obama set was a rather widespread global embarrassment and enabled other misbehaving regimes license to behave as they wished. SECOND, that the Iranian “deal” removed political leverage from the US and gave it to Iran. THIRD, that the idea of “leading from behind” was misguided in the Middle East, as the Syrian action appears to be widely praised amongst our Gulf allies. Another point that was brought out was the damage to the region that the previous Egyptian policy of “Mubarak must go” wrought, politically.
- An admission, again tacitly, that the demonstration of American power could quickly resolve contention in situations like China/North Korea, the expansion of the Iranian sphere of influence, and to an extent to be seen, Russian incursion into Syria.
It was a very interesting 24 hours. Who would have thought that the end of the judicial filibuster would be the least interesting thing we were talking about in the runup to the Gorsuch vote?
This article has been updated for addition to Iron Ladies on April 18, 2017.
