About that Syria strike. First, pretty much ends the whole Trump colluded with the Russians narrative, no? I mean, if there was truth to it, the Russians would have proof of some kind - that seems a safe bet, yes? And if they didn’t put that ‘proof’ to use as leverage against the strike, there sure as hell would be using it now as payback for the strike. Of course this doesn't amount to proof positive there was no collusion, but c’mon, the narrative is being steadily drained of credibility so I think it’s time to turn the page on that one.
Then there’s what it says about Obama’s horrible foreign policy record - any objective observer already knew the Obama administration was a foreign policy disaster - christ, Alan Dershowitz, as true blue a liberal as you’re gonna find, called him the worst foreign policy president the country’s ever had - but many liberals and most of the media still live in denial of this fact - and Obama clearly lives in denial of it - witness his almost too idiotic to believe statement that the proudest moment of his presidency was when he walked away from his redline in Syria, opened the door to a Putin power play in the region so he could supposedly get rid of Assad’s chemical weapons [only a fool believed that was actually gonna happen] all while appeasing Iran [and thereby pissing off every American ally in the Mideast] so as to push through his nuke deal with them - a deal that will never do what what it claims to do. And this atrocious mess of incompetence and naivety is Obama’s proudest moment as president. The left is never going to acknowledge how awful a president Obama was - such an acknowledgement would completely undermine their belief system - but hopefully this Syria action works to sap a little of the arrogance from their ideological chauvinism.
Not that this action can’t go wrong - the possibility of going wrong is always present in any military action - Putin and Iran can still choose to escalate and then Trump’s very capable national security team will really be put to the test to come up with good answers - but this action was necessary - it was the least bad option once Assad laid down the challenge - not just as regards our friends and foes in the Mideast, but just as importantly as regards China and the North Korea problem. That’s especially true if the whole point of this was to see if the Trump administration would be as pathetic a pushover as Obama’s.
The key question for me going forward is how important a role did Mattis and McMaster play in bringing about this response - were they responding to the wishes of Trump or was he responding to counsel from them - or was everybody pretty much on the same page once Assad threw down the challenge? Indeed, given how quickly they were able to single out a target, had Mattis and McMaster already prepped for this inevitability? That would be a comforting thought.
