Looking for Truth in the Syrian Flames.
I’m keeping this short because the point isn’t hard to grasp. And it’s an important one.
In response to the photos of dying children in Bashar al-Assad’s latest poison gas attack on his own people, President Trump launched dozens of cruise missiles at a Syrian air force base. Only history will tell us whether that was the right move. Hopefully it hasn’t lit the fuse on some giant global conflagration that will only end when we’re all picking food out of scavenged tins during a long nuclear winter.
I’m pretty certain this won’t prove to be a one-and-done sort of move, even if that’s what the President had in mind. At the very least it throws ice water on the bromance between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin, and that breaking apart will not be go easy.
The vitally important thing to watch is the role truth plays as this all unfolds. Remember truth?
The furious Russians say there is no proof that al-Assad used poison gas. Their explanation is that an errant bomb hit a rebel warehouse full of chemicals and that caused the poisonous cloud of gas. But the Russians always have a story like that when people are dying in close proximation to their military operations. Remember the “little green men” that invaded Ukraine, speaking Russian and wearing Russian Army uniforms with all the markings removed? So now even if there were some truth to the story the Russians are spinning to defend their ally al-Assad, Russian credibility is an empty joke. Telling the truth on occasion would have come in handy for them right now.
Speaking in the Rose Garden shortly after hearing the news of the poison gas attack, President Trump said, “It crossed a lot of lines for me. When you kill innocent children, innocent babies, little babies, with a chemical gas that is so lethal that people were shocked to hear what gas it was, that crosses many, many lines, beyond a red line, many many lines.” Not exactly Winston Churchill, but it may have been the first authentically honest moment of his presidency.
Donald Trump had been pushing America toward the sort of bullying dishonesty that that the world has come to expect from Russian President Vladimir Putin. Now comes the first big foreign policy act and the whole mean-spirited America First slogan from his campaign is in shreds.
Maybe it’s an aberration. Maybe it’s a watershed moment, and the President will finally see some advantage in telling the truth. It’s impossible to know what will come next out of the chaos in the White House. But if we’re going to launch missiles at someone, I’m glad we at least did it in a moment of honesty. It’s the only way such an act can make us stronger instead of weaker.
A couple of weeks ago Time Magazine ran a cover asking, “Is Truth Dead?” No, it’s not. Truth has never been more important.
