Donald Trump strikes Syria after chemical weapon attack

The White House’s infighting over Russia policy devolved into a very public feud after a Trump official accused Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley of “momentary confusion” for announcing sanctions against the Kremlin this weekend that the administration later walked back.

But Haley isn’t going to take the fall. “With all due respect, I don’t get confused,” she said in a statement, according to CNN.

President Donald Trump has made no secret of his desire to remove US troops from Syria. But his administration’s latest plan for how to do that is unlikely to materialize — and would be dangerous if it did.

Here’s the idea, as reported by the Wall Street Journal: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and other Arab states like Egypt would band their troops together and form an “Arab force” to keep ISIS at bay in Syria.

Two weeks ago, President Donald Trump was talking about withdrawing US troops from Syria, telling reporters at an April 3 press conference that “it’s time to come back home.” Yet this Friday, he ordered one of the biggest single US military strikes on Syrian targets — a bombing raid that hit three of Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons facilities — and vowed to “sustain this response until the Syrian regime stops its use of prohibited chemical agents.”

These proposals are coming from completely different places. It’s literally possible to remove the US ground troops who are in Syria to fight ISIS while continuing to bomb Assad-related targets from the air, but the two approaches reflect contradictory impulses to somehow end US military involvement in Syria while simultaneously threatening to bomb the country into the indefinite future. Trump’s first comments suggest the US will be heading for the exits; the second that the US is always a single chemical attack away from getting pulled in deeper.

Back in August 2013, the first time Bashar al-Assad deployed chemical weapons against his people on a large scale, Donald Trump repeatedly said the US shouldn’t bomb Syria in response. In a series of tweets spanning about a month, the future commander in chief warned President Barack Obama that a strike would be (among other things) a pointless waste of money that risked civilian casualties and broader escalation.

“Don’t attack Syria — an attack that will bring nothing but trouble for the US,” Trump wrote. “Focus on making our country strong and great again!”

On Friday night, the US, France, and the UK bombed Syria in response to the regime’s chemical weapons attack that killed more than 40 people. But in the aftermath of the US-led strikes, it’s clear that the drama surrounding the civil war is far from over.

Syrians loyal to the president, Bashar al-Assad, openly celebrated in the capital of Damascus on Saturday because the Western powers didn’t try to overthrow Assad. On Sunday, Assad’s forces continued to bomb civilians — but with conventional weapons.

President Donald Trump’s limited strike on Syria in April is an established tactic among presidents — his predecessors from Obama through Reagan all used similar actions, with varying results.

But limited strikes that accomplish all their goals are exceedingly rare — only about 6 percent can make that claim, according to research by expert Micah Zenko. Most strikes have mixed success, at best.

President Donald Trump’s decision to bomb Syria on Friday night has (once again) raised an important question: Does the American president have the legal right to order a military strike on another country without the consent of Congress?

The simple answer is no, as Congress is charged with officially declaring war under the US Constitution. But it’s not that simple. For the past several decades, and especially after the 9/11 attacks, Congress has consistently failed to check executive power when it comes to authorizing the use of military force. As a result, the perception of what’s permissible and what isn’t has drifted.

When the Trump administration debated how hard to bomb Syria, John Bolton, the president’s hawkish new national security adviser, suffered a surprising defeat.

This may seem like a strange thing to say, given that Trump did just bomb three Syrian government regime installations. But it’s not: Bolton was advocating a far more expansive intervention, one designed to do “ruinous” damage to the Assad regime’s military capabilities (per the Wall Street Journal).

The corruption and shady financial dealings that landed much of Trumpworld in legal hot water are so vast and all-encompassing that virtually no aspect of Donald Trump’s presidency can escape untouched — and American policy toward Syria is no exception.

The Syrian civil war has become a maelstrom of competing factions, each with its own regional backers pursuing their own agendas both inside Syria itself and in the Middle East more generally. These countries compete for influence on the ground but also inside Washington.

The United States, along with Britain and France, just bombed Syria. It’s the second time the US has waded into the country’s seven-year conflict in response to a chemical weapons attack.

The allies hit three targets, including the capital of Damascus, all related to Syria’s chemical program with 105 weapons: an important research center, a storage facility, and an equipment facility and command post. Damascus residents said they awoke to explosions. The strikes reportedly came from coalition cruise missile-equipped ships and warplanes.

The United States, along with Britain and France, bombed Syria on Friday night.

The decision to strike came one week after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons against civilians outside Damascus, killing at least 42 adults and children. After that attack, President Donald Trump promised to exact a “big price” on the Assad regime.

On August 20, 2012, then-President Barack Obama told a group of reporters the use of chemical weapons by Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria would cross his “red line.” A year later, almost to the day, Syrian forces killed more than 1,400 people with sarin gas, a particularly horrifying chemical weapon that can cause paralysis, convulsions, or death.

Obama didn’t respond immediately. Instead, a month later, he agreed to a deal with Russia to remove and destroy 600 metric tons of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile. That would, in theory, make it impossible for Assad to gas his own people, though he could still kill them using conventional weapons.

Less than 24 hours after ordering missile strikes in Syria, President Donald Trump declared, “Mission Accomplished!” in a tweet on Saturday.

The reaction was swift: Twitter users and political pundits immediately drew parallels with President George W. Bush’s now-infamous 2003 speech just over a month into the Iraq War, in which he announced an end to “major combat operations” in Iraq under a “Mission Accomplished” banner. In actuality, the war was far from over and would stretch on for years.

President Donald Trump decided to strike Syria on Friday night, and he might incur some unintended consequences — like increasing the risk of getting into a shooting war with Russia.

On Tuesday night, Russia’s ambassador to Lebanon said the Russian military could shoot down any missiles launched at Syria, and even retaliate against the planes or ships that fire the weapons. (As of now, there is no indication that any Americans were hurt in the strike.) But Trump responded to the threat the following morning, egging Russia on with his characteristic bravado.

The US military bombed Syria on Friday evening in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack last week that killed a number of innocent civilians, including children. American forces, together with British and French allies, bombed three targets in Syria — each of which was related to Syria’s chemical weapons program. No American pilots were killed, according to the Pentagon; the number of Syrian and other casualties is not yet known.

The strikes, Defense Secretary James Mattis said in a late-Friday press conference, were not the opening of a broader campaign. “Right now, this is a one-time shot ... designed to set back the Syrian war machine’s ability to produce chemical weapons,” Mattis said.

President Donald Trump has ordered strikes on Syria in retaliation for an April 7 chemical attack in a town outside Damascus.

“The evil and despicable attack left mothers and fathers, infants and children, thrashing in pain and gasping for air,” Trump said in a brief televised statement on Friday night. “These are not the actions of a man. They are crimes of a monster instead.”

President Donald Trump has ordered airstrikes on Syria as punishment for its chemical weapons attack last week in the town of Douma, which killed at least 42 people — including a number of children.

Understanding Trump’s decision requires understanding the real nature of the country’s horrific civil war. At its heart, it is a conflict between a regime that represents a minority of its citizens and the majority who want it gone. But over time, it has spiraled into an immensely complicated international war, with some of America’s most significant enemies and closest partners on various different sides.

President Donald Trump wants to punish Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad for using chemical weapons against his own people last week. The question is when, or if, Trump will actually give the order — and whether such a strike will be enough to prevent Damascus from using nerve agents in the future.

Trump is considering the strike because of an April 7 chemical attack in Douma, a suburb of the capital, that killed more than 40 people. Syria has denied responsibility, but on Thursday, NBC News reported that the US now has blood and urine samples that indicate exposure to a chemical weapon.

President Donald Trump just tweeted a warning that an attack on Syria is imminent — breaking his own policy of not signaling upcoming military moves.

The tweet comes as Trump weighs how to punish Damascus after President Bashar al-Assad’s forces carried out an April 7 chemical attack on civilians, killing at least 40 people. Trump promised a big response and has consulted with his national security team and foreign leaders for days about whether, and how hard, to strike Assad.

At 9:04 pm on Monday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer released an ominous statement saying the US had evidence that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was preparing to again use chemical weapons against his own people. And if Assad went through with it, he should expect the US to retaliate.

“If, however, Mr. Assad conducts another mass murder attack using chemical weapons, he and his military will pay a heavy price,” wrote Spicer.

It was a bad week for right-wing non-interventionists. The hodgepodge group of libertarians, pacifists, alt-righters, and paleocons had, for the part, latched onto Donald Trump’s campaign as a vehicle to smash the stranglehold of neoconservatives on the GOP and advance a stay-at-home foreign policy: no more wars in the Middle East, no interventions in the name of democracy or human rights or vengeance.

Trump became their man, when, in the midst of the Republican primaries, he did the unthinkable: He called Iraq “a disaster” and “a horrible mistake,” then accused the Bush administration of lying about weapons of mass destruction.

This is how the Beltway establishment, Republicans and Democrats alike, think about American foreign policy:

America’s role is to lead the world. Be it under the slogan of America’s “benevolent global hegemony,” the neoconservative version, or “the indispensable nation,” the neoliberal variant, the party in power scarcely matters. Anything that happens across the globe is potentially a critical American concern.

A majority of Democratic voters don’t see eye to eye with their party’s leaders on Capitol Hill over President Donald Trump’s strikes in Syria.

A new poll released by Gallup on Wednesday found that 61 percent of Democrats nationally opposed the strikes, with just 33 percent expressing their approval. (The remaining 6 percent said they weren’t sure.)

“The Middle East is one big, fat quagmire,” Donald Trump said in a November 2015 GOP primary debate.

Flash forward to April 2017. President Trump has just ordered the US military to bomb Bashar al-Assad’s forces for the first time. His deputies have suggested that the administration would consider more bombings if Assad uses chemical weapons again.

In Tuesday’s briefing, press secretary Sean Spicer said something astounding — that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad compared unfavorably, at least in one respect, to Adolf Hitler.

”Hitler didn’t even sink to the level of using chemical weapons,” Spicer said.