Not Another Middle East War

It looks like we might be at war with Syria.  Will this be a limited volley of cruise missiles to slap Assad's hand and maybe dissuade from future chemical weapons attacks or is this going to be Trump's Libya campaign?  Though Assad is clearly a villain, it is hard to see a good end to entering this mess.  The time to get involved was before Russia stationed planes on Syrian airfields and ships in Syrian harbors.  As US ground troops are highly unlikely, what army is going to take the field against Assad?  When Russia planes bomb the army with which we ally, will we assist by shooting them down?  Are we going to duplicate the technique that pushed Russia out of Afghanistan by arming the rebels with stinger missiles?  Afghanistan is doing so well that we have been entangled there for 16 years and counting?  This is fraught with peril.

 

Best case, this is just a way of saying, "Knock it off!"  If Assad can expect to have an airfield and several million dollars worth of aircraft destroyed in the wake of using chemical weapons to kill a handful of civilians, it may convince him that the price is too high.  Obama drew the red line and did nothing when it was crossed.  Trump drew no lines and acted immediately.  Which is a better strategy?  Clearly, the results of Obama's strategy were bad but his alternatives may have been worse.  Sometimes bad is the best choice on the table.

 

Now for some dark thoughts: could this be Trump's way of undermining the notion that he is a puppet of Putin?  An attack on a country with which Russia is overtly aiding in a military campaign is about the last thing one would expect from a Putin puppet.  Maybe this is Trump's pushback on Russian expansion and adventurism and Assad's chemical weapon attack just provided a pretext.  If Trump will launch cruise missiles at a country where Russian forces are stationed, how eager will Russia be to keep pressing Ukraine or continue its propaganda campaign to annex part of Lithuania?  In that case, this would be extremely bold, verging on reckless.  Perhaps in the wake of his legislative agenda grinding to a halt, Trump has decided to make his bones in foreign policy.

 

Rand Paul makes a good point when he says the United States was not attacked.  Though Trump claims this is a vital national security interest, he has not yet made the case.  He needs to make that case and put it before Congress.  No more Libya-like wars.  Of course, Republicans are spineless, so I am not optimistic they will hold Trump to the War Powers Act any better than they held Obama.