Convenient U-turn from a president who cant be trusted
Jonathan Freedland
Friday 7 April 2017 12.15 EDT
... we don’t yet know if the 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles that rained down on the Shayrat base in the early hours of Friday morning were a one-off or the start of something more.
Antony Blinken, who served as Barack Obama’s deputy secretary of state, recalled that the US intervention in Libya, which he backed, began with a very narrow, legitimate goal – the protection of civilians from an imminent threat of slaughter – but “ended in regime change”. Blinken warned Trump of the dangers of “mission creep”, urging him “to avoid falling into an escalation trap” ...
On Syria, Donald Trump has performed a U-turn so screeching, so dizzying, you can smell the burned rubber from here. Just 72 hours before these airstrikes, his administration was all but flashing a green light at Assad, hinting that he could do what he liked. Pull back further, and the volte-face is even more stunning. For years, Trump was adamant that he would stay out of Syria. Even when chemical weapons were used in August 2013, killing an estimated 1,300 people in Ghouta, Trump was firm: “What will we get for bombing Syria besides more debt and a possible long-term conflict?” he tweeted ...
... Trump wanted us to believe he had been moved to action by the pictures of dead children in Khan Sheikhun. But what of all the “beautiful babies” killed away from the TV cameras these last six years, by bombs of a different variety? When they were being slaughtered, Trump was happy to shrug off their deaths, sending his secretary of state and his UN ambassador out just days ago to give Assad the wink that he could carry on as before. It’s not reassuring to think that the American president does not listen to his intelligence briefings or even read the papers, but only acts when a tragedy hits primetime ...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/07/convenient-u-turn-president-who-cant-be-trusted