TRUMP SUCCESSFULLY CHANGES THE CONVERSATION
President Trump is famous for changing the subject when matters don’t go well for him. He’s now pulled an ace to get out of the hole he’s in with domestic affairs by ordering a heavy missile attack on Syrian military facilities allegedly used in the chemical weapons attack against Syrian rebels and civilians.
As a political tactic, the move has worked, at least temporarily. It now casts him as another wartime president, as his two predecessors, Barack Obama and George W. Bush, were — to their eventual regret. In the long run, the decision will only complicate Trump’s task in a job for which he has had little experience.
His decision to launch the attack, however, does square with his self-portrait as a stand-up tough guy. It should please many of his voters, even as it doesn’t quite conform to his 2016 campaign slogan of putting “America First.”
In his humanitarian justification for the air raids, the president cited the many photos of the “beautiful babies” who were victims of nerve gas that was allegedly used. But Trump took care to blame Obama for drawing a red line in 2013 against its use and then not enforcing it, although President Bashar Assad agreed to destroy his stockpile.
Shifting responsibility to others is another favorite Trump tactic when his actions don’t coincide with his oratory. This time he observed that, had Obama adhered to that earlier red line and attacked Syria then, he himself would not be facing the current dilemma. Yet on Sept. 9, 2013, Trump had tweeted: “Do NOT attack Syria, fix USA.”
The new president moved against Assad shortly after his own secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, had said the administration’s Syrian policy no longer seemed to advocate the ultimate removal of Assad from power. In a Rose Garden appearance with guest King Abdullah II of Jordan, Trump said, “I like to think of myself as a very flexible person,” but at the same time he appeared to be reacting emotionally and even impulsively to the humanitarian crisis.
He seemed to give little or no thought to consulting congressional leaders on using the military power authorized to fight terrorism after the 9/11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon. Obama, in a speech at the National Defense University in 2013, argued that the same authorization applied to U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere al-Qaida and other terrorists were engaged. The efforts of some members of Congress to revisit and update that authorization of use of military force have gone nowhere.
In Moscow, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin called for a meeting of the United Nations Security Council to consider what he termed the United States’ breach of international law against Syrian sovereignty, based on a “far-fetched pretense,” which has caused “significant damage to Russian-American relations, which were already in a deplorable state.”
Another Russian official said an agreement on coordination of Russian and American flights over Syria, part of their mutual air operations against the Islamic State to avoid risks involved in sharing Syrian air space, was being suspended.
All this complicates the supposedly warmer personal relationship between Trump and Putin, amid the continuing congressional and FBI investigations into the Russian intelligence intrusions into the 2016 presidential election.
Trump in his first two-plus months in the American presidency has taken on a crash course in domestic judicial and legislative affairs — and in foreign policy, including the perils of military combat.
For a president even with experience in either realm, navigating the current events would be quite a challenge. For Donald Trump, who has no such experience, it’s an assignment sure to tax his huge reserve of self-esteem. The American public watches nervously.