Trump condemns Syria attack, doesn’t telegraph U.S. response
Says chemical strike has changed his views of embattled Assad
WASHINGTON — His expression grave and his words emphatic, President Donald Trump declared on Wednesday the deadly chemical attack in Syria had crossed “many, many lines” and abruptly changed his views of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Although the president was seen as opening the door to a greater U.S. role in protecting the population in a vicious civil war that he has always said the United States should avoid, Mr. Trump refused to say what the U.S. might do in response.
Mr. Trump issued no ultimatums in comments that were being scoured by world leaders for signs of how the new president would react to a global crisis. Mr. Trump was seen as more reserved than many of his top advisers — including his U.N. envoy, who revived the hardhitting rhetoric of Mr. Trump’s political campaign and strongly hinted some U.S. action was coming.
Mr. Trump himself was noncommittal.
“I’m not saying I’m doing anything one way or another, but I’m certainly not going to be telling you,” he told reporters.
He blamed the attack squarely on Assad’s forces, though the embattled Syrian leader and his Russian backers denied it. Mr. Trump was viewed as suggesting that the assault that killed at least 72 people — some activists put the death toll at more than 100 — had diminished his former reluctance to plunge the U.S. further into the complex and dangerous turmoil in the Middle East.
“When you kill innocent
children, innocent babies — babies, little babies — with a chemical gas that is so lethal, people were shocked to hear what gas it was, that crosses many, many lines. Beyond a red line, many, many lines,” an emotional Mr. Trump said in the White House Rose Garden. U.S. officials said the gas was likely chlorine, with traces of a nerve agent like sarin. Doctors Without Borders and the U.N. healthy agency also said evidence pointed to nerve gas exposure.
While continuing to fault predecessor Barack Obama’s “weakness” in earlier years for enabling Assad, he acknowledged that dealing with the crisis is now his own responsibility and vowed to “carry it very proudly.”
Only days earlier multiple members of Mr. Trump’s administration had said Assad’s ouster was no longer a U.S. priority, drawing outrage from Assad critics in the U.S. and abroad. But Mr. Trump, standing alongside Jordan’s King Abdullah II, said Tuesday’s attack “had a big impact on me — big impact.”
Before Tuesday’s carnage, Mr. Trump was seen as focusing exclusively on defeating the Islamic State group in Syria. Since the attack Tuesday in rebel-held territory in northern Syria, Mr. Trump has been under increasing pressure to explain whether the attack would bring a U.S. response.
Mr. Obama had put Assad on notice that using chemical weapons would cross a “red line” necessitating a U.S. response, but then failed to follow through, pulling back from planned airstrikes after Congress wouldn’t vote to approve them. Critics have cited that as a key moment the U.S. lost much credibility.
The strongest indication that the U.S. might act apparently came at the United Nations.
“When the United Nations consistently fails in its duty to act collectively, there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action,” declared U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who is facing her first serious Syria showdown at the Security Council.
Defense Secretary James Mattis was asked about a possible U.S. response.
“It was a heinous act and will be treated as such,” Mr. Mattis said at the Pentagon.
The attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun bore telltale signs of nerve agent exposure such as victims convulsing and foaming from the mouth. Videos showed volunteer medics using firehoses to wash chemicals from victims’ bodies and lifeless children being piled in heaps.
The Alyousef family, one of the town’s main clans, was hardest hit — 22 members of the family, including 9month-old twins, have been buried so far.
Rescue workers in Khan Sheikhoun on Wednesday found terrified survivors still hiding in shelters as another wave of airstrikes battered the town. Those strikes appeared to deliver only conventional weapons damage.
Early U.S. assessments show the attack most likely involved chlorine and traces of the nerve agent sarin, according to two U.S. officials who spoke anonymously. Use of sarin would be especially troubling because it would suggest Syria may have cheated on its deal brokered by the U.S. and Russia to give up chemical weapons.
Meanwhile, the U.S. was working to lock down details proving Assad’s culpability. Russia’s military has said the chemicals were dispersed when a Syrian military strike hit a facility where the rebels were manufacturing weapons.
An American review of radar and other assessments showed Syrian aircraft flying in the area at the time of the attack, a U.S. official said.