White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer has told reporters that future strikes against Syria are possible. This is the same Sean Spicer who less than a week ago said that the idea of regime change in Syria was ‘silly’.
Today however he channelled the emotionally wrought US President and said,
That Friday’s missile strike on Sharyat air base was an impulsive and ill-judged move ordered by an inexperienced and emotional President after seeing television pictures of dead children gained further support on Sunday when US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the President’s National Security Adviser General H.R. McMaster both gave television interviews which bore all the hallmarks of a damage limitation exercise.
After supporting Donald Trump’s missile strike on Syria, John McCain is once again criticising the Trump administration.
When asked if the White House bore some responsibility for the chemical attack that McCain claims Syria was responsible for, he responded by saying,
Donald Trump’s confused foreign policy just got a lot more confusing. 24 hours after Sean Spicer claimed that regime change in Syria was no longer a viable option, Donald Trump seemed to imply the opposite.
Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov has confirmed that yesterdays ‘chemical attack’ near Idlib was not a chemical attack at all.
The Syrian Air Force targeted a chemical weapons depot belonging to terrorists operating illegally in Syria. The terrorist stockpile of chemical weapons at Khan Sheikhoun were often shipped to fellow terrorists operating in Iraq. This has been confirmed by the Iraqi government.
President Donald Trump meets with Saudi Defense Minister and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, March 14, 2017. (AP/Evan Vucci)
President Trump’s emerging foreign policy is one of contradictions and chaos, caught up in a combination of old establishment orthodoxies and some fresh recognition of reality but without any strong strategic thinker capable of separating one from the other and leading the administration in a thoughtful direction.
(ANTIWAR) Last week, US officials suggested what was seemingly a major policy change, insisting that the future of Syrian President Bashar Assad was up to the Syrian people, and that the US was accepting “reality” in moving away from demands for Assad’s ouster.
The blood-soaked quagmire that is Ukraine and recent statements from US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson alluding to the notion that regime change in Syria is off the table, indicate that the US policy of toppling governments it doesn’t like may be a thing of the past. However, western meddling in Belarus says otherwise.
In terms of foreign policy making, pragmatism has died in the west, although there are some glimmers of hope that it may be resurrected under a Trump Presidency.
But in other areas, pragmatism bordering on cynicism is not only present in the west but omnipresent. However, it is found virtually exclusively in the realm of domestic issues.
