Syria: The aftermath

After just 77 days in office, missile attack divides US over foreign policy U-turn

AMERICA was bitterly divided last night over Donald Trump’s dramatic U-turn on Syria.

Just 77 days into a presidency which he vowed would avoid foreign wars and ‘put America first’, Mr Trump ordered a missile attack that embroiled the US in the conflict.

It outraged many of his hardline supporters but earned applause in Congress from politicians who had criticised Barack Obama for failing to act over Syria.

The attack began at 3.45am local time when 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles – each costing around £800,000 – started raining down on the Assad regime’s Shayrat airbase.

Guided by satellite, they fly at low altitude and follow the contours of the ground to avoid detection. The missiles – launched from two US Navy warships, the USS Ross and USS Porter, in the eastern Mediterranean – pounded the base for three to four minutes. Each was programmed with a specific target – including the control tower, radar installations, fuelling stations and ammunition dumps.

Buildings thought to contain chemical weapons were deliberately not hit, to avoid leaks of toxic gas. The US gave Russia 60 to 90 minutes’ warning and none of the estimated 100 Russian military personnel based there were hurt.

The dramatic strike reversed a policy of US isolation which helped Mr Trump into the White House. As his ultra- conservative supporters deserted him for reneging on his pledge, he faced a US sharply split over the wisdom of becoming embroiled in the Syrian civil war.

Mr Trump has been warning for years that Syria was a quagmire whose vicious conflict the US should ignore. After Assad launched a devastating chemical weapons attack on civilians in the rebel town of Ghouta in 2013, Mr Trump warned Mr Obama of ‘ worldwide hell to pay’ and rocketing debts if he reacted with military action.

‘Again, to our very foolish leader, do not attack Syria,’ he wrote on Twitter. ‘If you do, many very bad things will happen & from that fight the US gets nothing!.’

Only days ago, he had insisted he was not ‘ president of the world’ but of America, while the White House signalled it would be foolish to try to bring down Assad.

But Mr Trump, who has tried to stop Syrian refugees entering the US, said he had a change of heart after being moved by the regime’s ‘horrific’ chemical attack on innocent Syrian men, women, children and ‘beautiful little babies’.

It wrongfooted many US politicians and pundits, who were yesterday wondering whether it was merely a one- off punishment for using chemical weapons or an entirely new strategy in Syria.

Can Assad – one of Russia’s few allies – expect the US to dramatically step up its attempts to deal with him, they ask.

Mr Trump found himself in the unusual position of being applauded by his political oppo- nents and castigated by his supporters. In Congress, he was clapped by Republicans who had criticised Mr Obama for failing to punish Syria for previous chemical weapon attacks.

But they attacked the White House for suggesting this was a one- off response, warning that America’s international standing would be badly damaged if Assad was able to portray himself in the Middle East as a leader who had withstood the might of the US.

High profile right-wing supporters accused Mr Trump of being rash and hypocritical. Some said they felt personally betrayed.

Veteran Republican senator John McCain said the strikes sent an important massage the ‘US won’t stand by as Assad, aided by Russia, slaughters innocent Syrians’.

But the controversial editor of website AltRight.com, Richard Spencer, told how he felt ‘shocked and angry’. In a video statement, he said: ‘No one voted for this, no one voted for Donald Trump in order for him to engage in these kinds of senseless, insane military interventions. Millions of people, including myself, voted for Donald Trump, in large part because he was the right way to avoid these kinds of things, but here we are.’

Conservative commentator Ann Coulter dismissively tweeted: ‘Trump campaigned on not getting involved in Mideast. Said it always helps our enemies and creates more refugees. Then he saw a picture on TV.’

Even Ukip leader Paul Nuttall branded Trump’s actions ‘rash, trigger-happy and nonsensical’.

He added: ‘Assad or Isis is not a choice anyone would wish to make. But firing off missiles in an enraged response shows weakness not strength in the face of horror. I hoped for better from this administration.’

E

ver since the start of the terrible Syrian conflict six years ago, the British Government has wanted Western military intervention to help get rid of President Bashar al Assad.

But this policy seemed to have failed. Assad appeared close to winning the war, as Trump acknowledged last week when his Press secretary said that Assad staying was a ‘political reality that we have to accept’.

But then came Tuesday’s dreadful chemical attack on the village of Khan Sheikhoun in north-west Syria.

Instantly, the British and American governments blamed Assad for the horror, and within 72 hours the U.S. launched a revenge missile assault on the airbase from which the chemical attack was believed to have been launched.

The exultation in Whitehall at this turnaround of events is all the greater because it marks such an extraordinary volte-face by Donald Trump. For it is less than three months since he took office and pledged non-intervention in Syria.

In order to counsel Trump’s White House team about the folly of this course, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson went to Washington to lobby them.

That attempt may have been fruitless at the time but Trump has now, it seems, been converted to supporting the need for military intervention.

Unfortunately, I cannot share the British Government’s elation, which evokes the mood in No 10 on the eve of the Iraq war in 2003 — with Theresa May now at risk of copying the poodle-like subservience Tony Blair showed to the then U.S. President George W Bush.

Back then, Blair took us to war on the assurances that it was being done with the noble motive of getting rid of the evil dictator Saddam Hussein, who posed a threat to world peace.

We were told that Western intelligence services (including MI6) had irrefutable evidence that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction, which he was ready to use against his own people and the rest of the world.

Similarly, today, we are told with cast-iron certainty that Assad ordered this week’s chemical attack and that he is an evil man in the Saddam mould.

NATUrAlly,

President Assad denies using chemical weapons and his claim is backed by his russian allies.

Indeed, considering that Assad has been in a stronger position than at any point in the past five years, what would be the point in inviting widespread censure for ordering such an illegal and horrific attack?

The truth is that he has all but won the war. It is only a few days since a disappointing international conference was held in Brussels on the Syria situation.

Meanwhile, it is important to remember that his beleaguered opponents have never shown a scintilla of concern about slaughtering innocent people and had every reason to orchestrate such an atrocity themselves — and blame Assad — in the hope of triggering Western military intervention which would change the course of the war.

The truth is that, at present, no one can prove what actually happened during Tuesday’s attack. All we know for sure is that Trump ordered an attack on a Syrian airbase in revenge.

This brings me to the collusion of the British Government.

Why was Theresa May happy to welcome Trump’s intervention — which russian foreign minister Sergey lavrov swiftly pointed out was an illegal assault on a foreign country? I believe that Mrs May’s only responsible course of action should have been to wait until Britain’s intelligence services could gather the evidence and ascertain the truth about the village attack.

The failure to do this means that, as in Iraq, MI6 risks being used as part of the propaganda arm of government to make the case for war rather than do its real job of reporting soberly on events. If so, we haven’t learned any of the lessons from the Iraq disaster.

I am convinced that one man in particular is to blame.

He is Matthew rycroft, Britain’s permanent representative to the United Nations and a worryingly gung- ho supporter of U. S. military action.

Indeed, he was loudly demanding a response before yesterday’s U.S. missile attack.

Unfortunately, rycroft has form as a hawk. He played a key role behind the scenes as a Downing Street official on the eve of the Iraq war.

He was the author of the notorious ‘Downing Street memo’ which showed that Blair believed that war with Saddam was ‘inevitable’ eight months before the invasion began and that the labour PM was committed to support U.S. plans for ‘regime change’ in Iraq.

Most cynically in that memo, rycroft recorded that ‘ the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy’.

This shameful document dictated the tone for the subsequent fabricated dossier on weapons of mass destruction, which falsely set out the basis for going to war with Iraq.

Sadly, this wretched episode did no harm to rycroft’s career, seeing him rise to his current post, which is Britain’s most important diplomatic job on the world stage.

It is, therefore, no surprise that the man who played a central role in the damnable conspiracy which took Britain to war with Iraq is at it again — banging the drum and demanding military action in Syria. So, what of the future? I have travelled very widely throughout the Middle east and Syria as a journalist over the past five years and I have to record that these developments chill me to the bone.

THIS

Syrian conflagration has from the start had the dreadful potential to extend into a third world war because bloodshed can spill into neighbouring states and then drag in the superpowers.

yesterday’s air strikes by America makes that more likely. They will embolden Assad’s domestic enemies. russia and Iran will become enmeshed deeper in the crisis.

It will extend terribly a war which had appeared to be coming to an end. Millions more refugees will flee to europe.

It will do nothing at all to help the children such as those killed on Tuesday. On the contrary, thousands more will die.

Will we never learn?