Is
Trump Enlisting in the War Party?
By
Patrick J. Buchanan
April
11, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- By firing off five dozen Tomahawk missiles at
a military airfield, our "America First"
president may have plunged us into another
Middle East war that his countrymen do not want
to fight.
Thus
far Bashar Assad seems unintimidated. Brushing
off the strikes, he has defiantly gone back to
bombing the rebels from the same Shayrat air
base that the U.S. missiles hit.
Trump
"will not stop here," warned U.N. Ambassador
Nikki Haley on Sunday. "If he needs to do more,
he will."
If
Trump fails to back up Haley’s threat, the hawks
now cheering him on will begin deriding him as
"Donald Obama."
But if
he throbs to the war drums of John McCain,
Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio and orders
Syria’s air force destroyed, we could be at war
not only with ISIS and al-Qaida, but with Syria,
Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.
A
Syrian war would consume Trump’s presidency.
Are we
ready for that? How would we win such a war
without raising a large army and sending it back
into the Middle East?
Another
problem: Trump’s missile attack was
unconstitutional. Assad had not attacked or
threatened us, and Congress, which alone has the
power to authorize war on Syria, has never done
so.
Indeed,
Congress denied President Obama that specific
authority in 2013.
What
was Trump thinking? Here was his strategic
rational:
"When
you kill innocent children, innocent babies –
babies, little babies – with a chemical gas …
that crosses many, many lines, beyond a red
line. … And I will tell you, that attack on
children yesterday had a big impact on me … my
attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very
much."
Two
days later, Trump was still emoting: "Beautiful
babies were cruelly murdered in this very
barbaric attack. No child of God should ever
suffer such horror."
Now,
that gas attack was an atrocity, a war crime,
and pictures of its tiny victims are
heart-rending. But 400,000 people have died in
Syria’s civil war, among them thousands of
children and infants.
Have
they been killed by Assad’s forces? Surely, but
also by U.S., Russian, Israeli and Turkish
planes and drones – and by Kurds, Iranians,
Hezbollah, al-Qaida, ISIS, U.S.-backed rebels
and Shiite militia.
Assad
is battling insurgents and jihadists who would
slaughter his Alawite brethren and the
Christians in Syria just as those Copts were
massacred in Egypt on Palm Sunday. Why is Assad
more responsible for all the deaths in Syria
than those fighting to overthrow and kill him?
Are we
certain Assad personally ordered a gas attack on
civilians?
For it
makes no sense. Why would Assad, who is winning
the war and had been told America was no longer
demanding his removal, order a nerve gas attack
on children, certain to ignite America’s rage,
for no military gain?
Like
the gas attack in 2013, this has the marks of a
false flag operation to stampede America into
Syria’s civil war.
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And as
in most wars, the first shots fired receive the
loudest cheers. But if the president has thrown
in with the neocons and War Party, and we are
plunging back into the Mideast maelstrom, Trump
should know that many of those who helped to
nominate and elect him – to keep us out of
unnecessary wars – may not be standing by him.
We have
no vital national interest in Syria’s civil war.
It is those doing the fighting who have causes
they deem worth dying for.
For
ISIS, it is the dream of a caliphate. For
al-Qaida, it is about driving the Crusaders out
of the Dar al Islam. For the Turks, it is, as
always, about the Kurds.
For
Assad, this war is about his survival and that
of his regime. For Putin, it is about Russia
remaining a great power and not losing its last
naval base in the Med. For Iran, this is about
preserving a land bridge to its Shiite ally
Hezbollah. For Hezbollah it is about not being
cut off from the Shiite world and isolated in
Lebanon.
Because
all have vital interests in Syria, all have
invested more blood in this conflict than have
we. And they are not going to give up their
gains or goals in Syria and yield to the
Americans without a fight.
And if
we go to war in Syria, what would we be fighting
for?
A New
World Order? Democracy? Separation of mosque and
state? Diversity? Free speech for Muslim
heretics? LGBT rights?
In
2013, a great national coalition came together
to compel Congress to deny Barack Obama
authority to take us to war in Syria.
We are
back at that barricade. An after-Easter battle
is shaping up in Congress on the same issue: Is
the president authorized to take us into war
against Assad and his allies inside Syria?
If,
after Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Yemen, we do
not want America in yet another Mideast war, the
time to stop it is before the War Party has us
already in it. That time is now.
Patrick J. Buchanan
is the author of the new book "The Greatest
Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to
Create the New Majority." To find out more about
Patrick Buchanan and read features by other
Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the
Creators website at
www.creators.com
.
The
views expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Information Clearing House.
