Mr. Trump has criticized conflict with the Assad government as a distraction from the war against the Islamic State and promoted reconciliation with Russia, the Syrian regime’s ally. Just days before the chemical weapons attack, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that Mr. Assad’s fate would be “decided by the Syrian people.”
.. The Syrian people — half of whom are displaced, the other living in a police state or in ruins — are in no position to choose anything. The implication was clear to Mr. Assad: No matter what I do, the Americans will allow me to remain in power.
Nikki Haley, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, reinforced this impression when she told reporters, “Our priority is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out.”
.. To Damascus, this looked like a green light to show Syrian civilians and rebels that there were no limits to what the regime would do to win, that the government could kill by whatever means to get the job done most quickly.
.. Mr. Tillerson quickly made clear that the cruise missile strikes do not signal a change in American policy — so far there is no immediate plan to force Mr. Assad’s ouster, to protect the opposition or to establish safe zones in Syria.
.. If Mr. Assad is smart, he will do it without chemical weapons — siege, starvation and barrel bombs will remain his tools of choice.
Syrian Foreign Minister Denies Using Chemical Weapons
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem on Thursday denied his government used chemical weapons on a rebel-held town in the Idlib province.
“I stress to you once again: the Syrian army has not, did not, and will not use this kind of weapons – not just against our own people, but even against the terrorists that are targeting our civilians indiscriminately,” Muallem said at a press conference in Damascus, as reported by Al-Jazeera.
Muallem went on to give the same account of the incident that Russia has insisted upon, claiming that Syrian warplanes “attacked an arms depot belonging to al-Nusra Front,” which is al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria... The Foreign Minister claimed the Nusra Front, ISIS, and other organizations “continue to store chemical weapons in urban and residential areas.”
Trump might be going to war. But he has no plans for establishing peace.
Does the president really know what he’s getting into?
.. The United States could pursue a limited strategy focused on one-off strikes in response to the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons. In that case, the strike on the air base from which this week’s chemical attack was launched will probably be enough. President Bashar al-Assad and his generals will get the message and stop using those types of weapons... The regime will continue to terrorize civilians through airstrikes, artillery and surface-to-surface missiles against densely populated areas. It will continue to employ tactics such as starvation sieges and population transfers to tear communities apart... And Assad’s forces and their Russian allies may up the scale of attacks to humiliate Trump and demonstrate the fecklessness of American military force. Thus, the pressure may grow on the United States to respond, and it may be hard for Trump to resist.. The United States could target a wide array of facilities to compel Assad, such as weapons factories, major military bases, even ministries in Damascus responsible for the war effort. Using the threat of missile strikes instead of flying in manned aircraft to drop bombs is much less dangerous. The United States would not have to first destroy all of Syria’s air defenses.. the United States would then work with moderate armed groups in opposition areas to marginalize extremists and stabilize this territory... If the U.S. military inadvertently kills a significant number of Russians, tensions between the world’s two largest nuclear weapons states could skyrocket... The regime would probably respond with the same scorched-earth tactics it has used elsewhere.. The most viable political goal is a Syria that remains whole as one nation, but with a governance model that would feature power devolved away from the central government to local actors who hold the territory in six different zones of control that now divide the country.. Such an outcome would require a major diplomatic lift to mediate an arrangement between the Turks and Kurds in the north. The United States would have to come to a settlement with Russia and Iran on who retakes the territory currently held by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. And we would need to assure Israel and Saudi Arabia that Iranian influence in Syria will be contained.Unfortunately, it is this final and most important part of any plan for Syria — the political plan — which we are most concerned about when viewing the Trump administration’s approach... most concerning of all — they have de-emphasized diplomacy, aid and reconstruction as tools of American foreign policy by calling for dramatic financial cuts for all these efforts and making clear to the international community that the United States is stepping back from coordinating these efforts.
.. If the United States is to turn the limited tactical strikes in Syria into a real strategic gain, the Trump team will have to change its approach, and focus not only on winning the war but also on winning the peace.
‘I’m officially off the Trump Train’: Trump’s online base is furious about the Syria strikes
Mike Cernovich and Alex Jones’s Infowars — both have earned praise from President Trump or those close to him in the recent past — promoted a conspiracy theory all day Thursday that blamed the U.S. deep state for a suspected nerve agent attack Tuesday in Syria, and not the Assad regime. Infowars called the attack a “false flag” meant to force the United States into a war.
.. There’s plenty of evidence that Trump reads and values conspiracy-theory sites like Infowars, and Cernovich himself appears to have some readers in the Trump administration.