The
Spoils of War: Trump Lavished With Media and
Bipartisan Praise For Bombing Syria
By
Glenn Greenwald
April 08, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- "The
Intercept"
-
In every type
of government, nothing unites people behind
the leader more quickly, reflexively or
reliably than war. Donald Trump now sees how
true that is, as the same establishment
leaders in U.S. politics and media who have
spent months denouncing him as a mentally
unstable and inept authoritarian and
unprecedented threat to democracy are
standing and applauding him as he launches
bombs at Syrian government targets.
Trump, on Thursday night, ordered an attack
that
the Pentagon said
included the launching of 59 Tomahawk
missiles which “targeted aircraft, hardened
aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical
storage, ammunition supply bunkers, air
defense systems, and radars.” The governor
of Homs, the Syrian province where the
attack occurred,
said early this morning
that the bombs killed seven civilians and
wounded nine.
The
Pentagon’s statement said the attack was “in
retaliation for the regime of Bashar Assad
using nerve agents to attack his own
people.” Both Syria and Russia vehemently
deny that the Syrian military used chemical
weapons.
When asked
about this yesterday by the Globe and Mail’s
Joanna Slater, Canadian Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau
urged an investigation
to determine what actually happened before
any action was contemplated, citing what he
called “continuing questions about who is
responsible”:
But
U.S. war fever waits for nothing. Once the
tidal wave of American war frenzy is
unleashed, questioning the casus belli
is impermissible. Wanting conclusive
evidence before bombing commences is
vilified as sympathy with and support for
the foreign villain (the same way that
asking for evidence of claims against Russia
instantly converts one into a “Kremlin
agent” or “stooge”).
That the Syrian
government deliberately used chemical
weapons to bomb civilians became absolute
truth in U.S. discourse within less than 24
hours – even though Trudeau urged an
investigation, even though it was denied in
multiple capitals around the world, and even
though Susan Rice just two months ago
boasted to NPR:
“We were able to get the Syrian government
to voluntarily and verifiably give up its
chemical weapons stockpile.”
Whatever happened with this event, the
Syrian government has killed hundreds of
thousands of people over the past five years
in what began as a citizen uprising in the
spirit of the Arab Spring, and then morphed
into a complex proxy war involving foreign
fighters, multiple regional powers, ISIS, Al
Qaeda, and Russia.
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The CIA has
spent more than a billion dollars a year to
arm anti-Assad rebels for years,
and the U.S. began bombing Syria in 2014 –
the 7th predominantly Muslim country
bombed by Obama
– and never stopped. Trump had already
escalated that bombing campaign, culminating
in a strike last month that Syrians say
destroyed a mosque and killed dozens.
What makes this latest attack new is that
rather than allegedly targeting terrorist
sites of ISIS and Al Qaeda, it targets the
Syrian government – something Obama
threatened to do in 2013
but never did.
Leading
Congressional Democrats – including Senate
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi –
quickly praised Trump’s bombing while
raising concerns about process. Hours before
the bombing commenced, as it was known Trump
was planning it, Hillary Clinton – who has
been critical of Obama for years for not
attacking Assad – appeared at an event and
offered her categorical support for what
Trump was planning:
The Trump White
House is preliminarily indicating that this
was a limited strike, designed to punish
Assad for his use of chemical weapons,
rather than a new war to remove him. But
such aggression, once unleashed, is often
difficult to contain. The Russian and
Iranian governments, both supportive of
Assad, have
bitterly denounced Trump for the attack,
with a Putin spokesman calling it a
“significant blow” for U.S.-Russian
relations. Russia already
announced retaliation
in the form of suspending cooperation
agreements.
Even if it is contained, there are endless
implications from Trump’s initiation of
military force against the Syrian
Government. For now, here are ten critical
points highlighted by all of this:
1. New wars will always
strengthen Trump: as they do for every
leader.
The instant
elevation of Trump into a serious and
respected war leader was palpable. Already,
the New York Times is
gushing that “in launching a military strike just 77
days into his administration, President
Trump has the opportunity, but hardly a
guarantee, to change the perception of
disarray in his administration.”
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