Operation Wag the Dog -- Is Syria being Bombed Because Trump has Bombed?
Bryan Zepp Jamieson
April 13th, 2018
Events transpired today that mean the Mueller investigation matters much less than yesterday; Trump’s fate is sealed even if he fires Mueller tomorrow. He will face criminal charges, and in all likelihood will go to prison.
The State of New York announced that a criminal investigation is ongoing against Trump’s fixer, the very criminal lawyer Michael Cohen. Evidence came out today among other things, that Cohen was lying when he said he never went to Prague to negotiate with the Russians about the so-called “Pee Pee Tape”-he snuck in over the open German border so it didn’t show up on his passport. Why would he lie about it if not to try to make the urinating hookers go away?
Apparently he recorded a lot of his conversations with Trump, an Alexander Butterfield moment like the one that effectively destroyed the Nixon presidency.
Oh, and we’re bombing Damascus. Trump went on TV, looking and sounding really presidential, a baboon in a tuxedo, and talked about how Assad was an awful, awful man who gassed his own people, men, women and children.
Assad is an awful, awful man who gassed his own people, men, women and children. That’s pretty hard to dispute. But then, our old ally Saddam Hussein Assad was an awful, awful man who gassed his own people, men, women and children, and look how the American response to that turned out. American reactions by both Bushes killed more Kurds (note: NOT “Saddam’s own people” and they get quite pissed when you pretend that they are) than Saddam could manage, even armed with the very best poison gases America could make. As Mark Russell noted, “We know Saddam has weapons of mass destruction. We kept the receipts.”
The atrocities were real. The American response was hypocritical, violent, and counter productive. They were even greater atrocities. Is was a crime against humanity under George HW Bush (“Highway of Death”? That ring a bell?) and even worse under George W. Bush, who staged a mass carpet bombing of a major civilian center so it would look impressive on CNN (“Shock and Awe”).
Did killing over half a million people bring back a single one of the Kurds that Saddam gassed? Remember, more of them died from American policies than Saddam could ever imagine.
It’s not going to be any different this time. In fact, it may be far worse.
You might give either of the Bushes credit for at least having some human reservations about what they were doing, and simply didn’t imagine how bad attacking a weak desert country 6,000 miles away could be, both for the country in question and America. Maybe they did think they could get rid of Saddam somewhat bloodlessly. They may have been vicious and corrupt, but they were at least human.
We don’t have any such assurances with this President, soi-disant, who is an utter sociopath.
I felt a chill watching him emote about the horror of chemical attacks—he doesn’t care. He wouldn’t hesitate to conduct such attacks himself, given the opportunity, I’m sure of that.
Trump just sees this as a last ditch way of avoiding the final collapse of his presidency and his long criminal career.
The most immediate concern is the Russian response. There’s 8,500 Russian troops in Syria, staunchly supporting the Assad regime. Iran has people in there, and they, too, are Russian allies.
Are Putin and his stooge Trump exchanging knowing winks as America spends a few billion dollars on what amounts to Kabuki warfare (now with real casualties!), or is Putin taking this in in a cold rage, wondering how his monkey on a stick got so out of control?
The UK and France got roped into this. Prime Minister Theresa May is an imbecile, and the Tories need a crisis to keep their minority rule in Parliament going, but their hatred of chemical warfare is real, and valid. Emmanuel Macron considers the use of chemical weapons in Syria a “red line”, a crime against humanity. He also may be a strong force to avoid escalation, since he is actively coordinating with the Russians.
Given their own history with such weapons, Britain and France are probably honest in their response. And may work with Mad Dog Maddis to try and keep Trump and the Porn ‘Stache from Hell from blowing things up into WW3 under the notion that American actions don’t have consequences. Both have the notion that bombing people will make them respect them, a notion of which any Londoner can disabuse them.
The Pentagon says that they are being careful to let the Russian know what areas they might target, so there’s that, at least. Of course, the Russians might be passing that information along to Assad immediately, but then, we’re trying to avoid an armed confrontation between the world’s two biggest nuclear powers. This presents little risk to American bombers, as Syria has negligible air defenses. Trump wouldn’t be attacking them if he thought they could hit back; that’s just not his style. It’s what he does through sheer incompetence and a desire to move the focus off his myriad scandals that scares me.
I predicted major crisis by the weekend, which required absolutely no clairvoyance on my part. Any person with a three digit IQ saw it coming.
What none of us know is what comes next.
