It is deja vu all over again, another Muslim country. This time Syria. The President goes to war virtually unilaterally, the media sing glory, glory hallelujah, and politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike praise the president followed by a poll bump; too early to confirm the latter.
Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria, is a very evil person. He kills his own people. But so does dictators or leaders throughout the world. Syria is in the news every day. Friendly governments and not-so-friendly governments to the United States who do the same without mainstream media coverage are not (e.g., Russia, Philippines, Turkey, Nigeria).
There is a civil war in Syria. There are many armed factions including many that are anathema to ‘American values’ which should give us pause. Why would any American President get involved in a situation in which the instability makes accurate information at best suspect?
As recent as a week ago it was Trump’s policy to leave Syria alone.
(CNN)The Trump administration doubled down Thursday on prioritizing the fight against ISIS over ending the Syrian civil war and getting rid of its main protagonist, President Bashar al-Assad — a suggestion that was swiftly criticized by hawks on the Hill.
Indicating a possible shift in US policy on the war in Syria from the days of the Obama administration, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on a trip to Turkey that the “longer-term status of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian people.”
And in New York, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley was even stronger about the Trump administration’s decision not to push for Assad’s departure. “Our priority is no longer to sit and focus on getting Assad out,” Haley told wire reporters Thursday, according to AFP.“Do we think he’s a hindrance? Yes,” she said. “Are we going to sit there and focus on getting him out? No.”
It is hard to believe that both Putin and Assad didn’t get the message. It is harder to believe that Assad would then force President Trump’s masters, the military-industrial complex to force him into some kind of act.
We cannot and must not believe the reports our mainstream media is giving us. It is not logical. The only thing we know is that we do not know. We do know that Trump is in bed with the Russians based on empirical evidence. We do know that the military industrial complex along with its puppets in both parties are biased to using our vast military resources and keeping the industry flushed with our tax dollars even as programs beneficial to us all are left wanting.
But ask yourself some simple questions.
- It is clear Assad was not a target of the Trump administration. Why do something that would have low information Americans and neocons force the president to act?
- Is it not likely that the chemical weapons were used by the opposition to force U.S. action?
- Or just as well, could this be an Assad-Putin-Trump pact to force a U.S. action that gives a semblance of a rift between Trump and Putin? An expensive U.S. attack that destroyed nothing of substantial value, runaways, air defense, etc., is probative. It is clear that Trump likely established communication backchannels with Putin.
Establishment Democrats and Establishment Republicans agree on very little. The one thing they always seem to agree on is stuffing the coffers of the military-industrial complex. And the media, just like the run up to Iraq, are simply singing the tune of the warmongering plutocrats without doing any logical examination of what is likely occurring.
Every Trump voter was deceived. Let me be fair here. This action would not have been a shock for those who voted for Hillary Clinton. Everyone knows she is a hawk but one with a heart to support the poor and middle-class. She would have gotten the same flaming pushback if and when she would have launched an attack like this. But those who voted for Trump whether they liked him or not, did so because they wanted a president who they thought would fix their problems before creating more international problems that forced him to take his eye off the ball.
The plutocratic military-industrial complex driven presidency reigns.