If it is a one-off, this strike is the very definition of a symbolic pinprick. It was launched with highly precise weapons against the airfield from which the Syrian chemical attack emanated. According to reports, we apprised Russian personnel at the base beforehand, meaning the Syrians effectively had advance warning as well.
In other words, if this is all that we have in store for Bashar al-Assad, President Trump’s dismayed anti-interventionists don’t have that much to worry about and interventionists have less to celebrate than think (more about them in a moment). Assad can go on killing women and children — he will simply have to use less efficient and more conventional weapons to do it. What a massive moral victory for the West!
•.. Look, I get why — morally, strategically, and legally — chemical weapons are different than conventional ones. But if my entire family and village were wiped out with bullets and bombs rather than chemical weapons, I wouldn’t draw much solace from any of these distinctions.
.. But Trump opposed enforcing Obama’s red line back then, nevertheless. The difference, as Trump admirably admitted from the Rose Garden, is that he’s president now and that changes your perspective on things.
.. That is a sound argument. But it was just as sound in 2013. Trump’s real motivation seems to be the fact that babies were “choked out” and that he saw it on TV. And it is this apparent fact that should give everyone — supporters and critics alike — the most cause for concern.
.. But the problem with charismatic leaders is that they are often a kind of Rorschach test. People project onto them what they want to see. I’ve lost count of how many conversations I’ve had with hardcore Trump fans who’ve described wildly different Donald Trumps — not simply different from the man I see, but different from each other. As a matter of logic, not all of these assessments can be right.
.. Earlier this week I wrote a column about how the core problem with Trump’s presidency so far isn’t his lack of an agenda or his tweeting or any of that. It’s Trump’s own character.
.. I do talk to a lot of people in and around the Trump administration. And the simple fact is that the chaos in the Trump White House is an outgrowth of the president’s personality. He’s mercurial. He cares more about status, saving face, respect, “winning,” etc. than he does about any public policy.
.. I think he’s sincere in his views about immigration, trade, excessive regulation, etc. But they take a back seat to Trump’s desire to maintain his charismatic status (which is why we’ve seen so many stories about how he gets mad at staffers who get good press — a really bizarre attitude for a manager when you think about it).
.. As Rich put it the other day, writing about the (first) push for Trumpcare:
Trump, for his part, has lacked the knowledge, focus or interest to translate his populism into legislative form. He deferred to others on legislative priorities and strategies at the outset of his administration, and his abiding passion in the health-care debate was, by all accounts, simply getting to a signing ceremony.
.. The strike on Syria is the single best proof that Trump has no overriding commitment to any ideological position. And I say this, again, as someone who supports the strike.
.. If Trump can abandon his position on this — all because of some horrific pictures on TV — what position is safe?
.. The fact that some in the Trump-can-do-no-wrong crowd are setting their collective hair on fire over the Syria strikes is a sign of ideological health (even if, again, I disagree with the substance of their complaint).
.. But the idea that the chaos in the White House is a function of bad staff is grossly unfair, even to Bannon. The chaos isn’t a bug in the Trump program — it is the program. It’s how he likes to run things. He could bring in a whole new roster of people, the result will likely be the same.
.. But pragmatism about ends isn’t pragmatism at all, it’s Nietzschean nihilism. If your goals are made slaves to your desire to seem like a winner, then the question of what you “win” at becomes entirely negotiable.
.. Conceptually, this is the difference between a knight and a mercenary. A knight fights for certain lofty ideals; a mercenary fights to win and reap the rewards. Politically, this is the lesson of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s governorship. He decided that he’d rather be a successful liberal governor than a failed conservative one.
.. if I were a committed America Firster like Coulter and Ingraham, I’d see this for what it is: incredibly positive reinforcement for a politician who responds to flattery more than most.
.. second, I’d recognize that the lesson Trump might learn from this is that your poll numbers and press clippings get better when you throw your biggest fans under the bus and listen to the establishment, Jared Kushner, or Lord knows who else.
Maybe liberals are so ‘P.C.’ because conservatives keep excusing bad behavior
I’m not naive enough to be stunned by Akin, King, O’Reilly or Trump, but as a Republican, I continue to be dismayed by the willingness of fellow Republicans and conservatives to overlook, rationalize and make excuses for this type of behavior. And each time I see conservatives defending, or looking away, in the face of other conservatives’ noxious behavior, I become less and less sure that liberals aren’t justified in taking the sometimes-condescending, always-disapproving “politically correct” approach that they do in these all-too-predictable episodes.
.. I didn’t always think this way about liberal highhandedness toward Republicans. I used to co-sign the typical conservative rejoinder to political correctness, which generally goes something like: Life’s not fair, so please get over yourself.
.. Yes, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) was rewarded for choosing expediency over morality by endorsing Trump’s candidacy, even as he condemned Trump’s attack on Judge Gonzalo Curiel’s Mexican heritage as “the textbook definition of a racist comment.” In doing so, Ryan confirmed an unsettling truth: When some in the Party of Lincoln witness racism, it’s not necessarily a dealbreaker. Indeed, the GOP won big in 2016 embracing the same rhetoric I’m calling out now — rhetoric we said we were leaving behind in the 2013 autopsy report commissioned after Mitt Romney’s 2012 defeat.
.. Trump lost the popular vote with our current demographic landscape by a margin of almost 3 million, and demographics are rapidly changing, not in his favor. Republicans who treat 2016 as the rule rather than the exception will come to regret it.
.. it’s not political correctness to expect common courtesy and respect. And it’s not a burden on a politician or anyone else to refrain from making sexist and racist remarks. It’s both the right thing to do, and an approach in keeping with the values that the Republican Party is supposed to stand for, including judging all people as individuals, not caricaturing them because of their race or gender.
.. It’s hard to deny that we’ve become a society where people are put out by the smallest slights, real or perceived.
.. every time conservatives and Republicans let an O’Reilly slide — rather than take a stand in favor of common decency — the “politically correct” scorn of liberals becomes just a bit more justified.
.. no longer defending the indefensible would be a start.
Gawker’s Essential Unevenness
simply the manner in which the site operated: the combativeness, the lack of respect, the speed of the writing and editing and publishing, the relative absence of organizational hierarchy instituted by Nick Denton and the editors who worked for him.
.. Why, if it took its work seriously, would it run “some of both the best and worst of 21st century journalism,” as Salon put it, and all under the same name? But the best and the worst were fundamentally linked: the freedom at Gawker is what made the mistakes inextricable from the good, risky work that Gawker took on.
I Ran the C.I.A. Now I’m Endorsing Hillary Clinton.
I found her to be prepared, detail-oriented, thoughtful, inquisitive and willing to change her mind if presented with a compelling argument.
.. her understanding that diplomacy can be effective only if the country is perceived as willing and able to use force if necessary
.. During the early debates about how we should respond to the Syrian civil war, she was a strong proponent of a more aggressive approach, one that might have prevented the Islamic State from gaining a foothold in Syria.
.. When some wanted to delay the Bin Laden raid by one day because the White House Correspondents Dinner might be disrupted, she said, “Screw the White House Correspondents Dinner.”
.. the character traits he has exhibited during the primary season suggest he would be a poor, even dangerous, commander in chief.These traits include his obvious need for self-aggrandizement, his overreaction to perceived slights, his tendency to make decisions based on intuition, his refusal to change his views based on new information, his routine carelessness with the facts, his unwillingness to listen to others and his lack of respect for the rule of law... President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was a career intelligence officer, trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them. That is exactly what he did early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump’s vulnerabilities by complimenting him. He responded just as Mr. Putin had calculated...ignoring that he has killed and jailed journalists and political opponents, has invaded two of his neighbors and is driving his economy to ruin. Mr. Trump has also taken policy positions consistent with Russian, not American, interests — endorsing Russian espionage against the United States, supporting Russia’s annexation of Crimea and giving a green light to a possible Russian invasion of the Baltic States...This position, which so clearly contradicts the foundational values of our nation, plays into the hands of the jihadist narrative that our fight against terrorism is a war between religions... Our nation will be much safer with Hillary Clinton as president.