Trump
Doctrine: Zero Tolerance to Enemies and
International Law
By Finian
Cunningham
April
12/13, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- "SCF"
-
Donald Trump’s order to blast
Syria with a barrage of Tomahawk
missiles which resulted in the massacre of
civilians, including children, was not only a
criminal act of aggression. It seems to be aimed
at defining a Trump Doctrine for his presidency.
That doctrine could be labelled thus: shoot
first and don’t dare ask any questions.
The world is being served notice
that the US is a rogue state of the most
reckless proportions.
Less facetiously, but no less
seriously, Trump’s search for a presidential
doctrine might be put as: zero tolerance for
designated US enemies and international law.
Like all occupants of the White
House before him, US presidents are customarily
crowned with a specific doctrine that defines
their foreign policy. The tradition goes back to
President James Monroe who in 1823 bequeathed
the Monroe Doctrine, which asserted American
hegemony in Latin America as its «backyard» over
European colonial interests.
More recently, the Bush Doctrine
of GW Bush proclaimed that the US would
unilaterally pursue its military interests to
«go after terrorists» in any foreign country, in
the wake of the 9/11 terror events.
Trump’s immediate predecessor
Barack Obama promulgated the Obama Doctrine,
which purportedly advocated cautious engagement
to negotiate with foreign adversaries while
retaining the right to use military power, best
seen perhaps in the policy to seek diplomacy
with Iran over its nuclear program.
Trump’s would-be
doctrine amplifies Bush’s unilateral pre-emptive
military strike policy. Only days after the air
strikes on Syria, Trump then orders an
aircraft carrier battle group toward the Korean
Peninsula, headed up by the USS Carl Vinson, as
an explicit warning to North Korea.
Following the missile barrage on
Syria last week, White House spokesman Sean
Spicer said: «It sent a signal to not just
Syria, but throughout the world».
Israeli prime minister Benjamin
Netanyahu caught the drift of rationale by
remarking that Trump’s Tomahawks to Syria «will
resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran,
Pyongyang and elsewhere». The «elsewhere» is
loaded with sinister implications.
Trump ordered the striking of a
Syrian airbase with 59 cruise missiles «in
response» to a chemical weapons incident two
days before in Idlib province. The White House
and the entire US media have asserted without
the slightest question that chemical weapons
were dropped by the Syrian air force on the town
of Khan Sheikhoun – killing over 80 people. The
White House even accused Russia of «complicity»
in those deaths because of its military support
for Syria.
Russian calls for a proper
investigation into the chemical weapons incident
were rebuffed by Washington – which proceeded to
carry out the air strike with cruise missiles
launched from two of its warships in the
Mediterranean. The US claimed that the airbase
at Shayrat was targeted because this was from
where the Syrian warplanes had mounted the
earlier raid on Khan Sheikhoun. According to
Talal Barazi, the governor of Homs City near to
the targeted airbase, some nine civilians,
including four children, were killed in the US
missile strikes. So much for Trump lamenting the
deaths of «beautiful babies» at Khan Sheikhoun
as the motive for his subsequent ordering of the
US air strike.
In the aftermath of the US
missile barrage, Russia’s deputy ambassador the
United Nations, Vladimir Safronkov, said the US
was blocking attempts to form an impartial
investigation into the alleged chemical weapons
incident at Khan Sheikhoun because it was
«afraid» of the truth coming out. Safronkov
earlier noted that the American claims of the
Syrian government carrying out that attack were
based entirely on «discredited sources» and
dubious video images supplied from «media
activists» affiliated with jihadist armed
groups.
Since that
incident, US and other Western media news
outlets have wholly concluded without any hint
of skepticism that it was the Syrian government
forces who carried out the chemical weapons
attack. The British government has, for
example, accused Russia
of «responsibility» in the civilian deaths, a
claim underlined in the decision by foreign
minister Boris Johnson to cancel a schedule
official visit to Moscow this week.
With this monopolistic narrative
prejudiced against the Syria government and its
allies, the chances for an impartial
investigation into the chemical weapons incident
in Khan Sheikhoun have in effect been rendered
void. As with the earlier notorious Sarin gas
poisonings near Damascus in August 2013, the
latest incident has become an article of faith
that it was the Syrian forces of President
Bashar al Assad who carried out the attack. Even
though there is much evidence that the two
events were actually carried out by the
foreign-backed jihadists in a deliberate false
flag smear to induce US military intervention.
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President Trump has taken the
bait where his predecessor Barack Obama balked
back in 2013. Astoundingly, Trump’s brazen act
of war last week was based on negligible
evidence, save for video footage supplied by
jihadist-connected media activists belonging to
the discredited White Helmets.
But obvious, too, is that not
only is Trump demonstrating that he is prepared
to shoot first. In addition, the Trump
administration, aided and abetted by the US
media and allied governments, are making sure
that no-one can dare to even ask questions
later. The whole sordid act of aggression is a
fait accompli.
Even though there
are abundant glaring questions needing
answers. The Syrian government says that it
doesn’t have chemical weapons after the
Russian-brokered decommissioning deal back in
2013. Syria’s disarmament was confirmed by the
UN monitoring group the Organization for
Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
Furthermore, the
Syrian government says that
it informed the OPCW only weeks ago that toxic
chemicals for armaments were being transported
inside Syria by the jihadist networks. That
appears to have been confirmed recently by
Kurdish rebels who said that the chemicals were
being secretly supplied by the Turkish military.
This is the same route by which the jihadists
obtained Sarin for the similar 2013 attack in
which hundreds of civilians were killed in the
Damascus suburb of East Ghouta.
Russian military accounts of the
latest incident at Khan Sheikhoun are plausible.
The Syrian air force carried out conventional
strikes against jihadist groups in the vicinity,
which resulted in the accidental leaking of
toxic chemicals from weapons depots held by the
militants. The latter may also have used the
Syrian air strikes as cover for the deliberate
release of toxins, which were then conveniently
videoed for propaganda purpose – a purpose that
succeeded, from their point of view, given
Trump’s subsequent military orders.
It was no coincidence that Trump
gave the Tomahawk strike order while he was
entertaining Chinese President Xi Jinping at his
Palm Beach resort in Florida on Thursday night.
Trump reportedly informed the Chinese leader
during dinner.
Minutes later, Trump publicly
announced the impending air strikes on Syria.
His words referred to Assad as a dictator whose
behavior US policy had up to then «failed
dramatically to change».
Only days before
that, Trump had announced that
the US was prepared to take unilateral military
action against China’s ally North Korea if
Beijing did not help in reigning in Kim Jung-Un’s
nuclear weapons program. The US options reportedly include
«decapitation» strikes against Pyongyang.
Hitting Syria in macho fashion,
based on such reckless disregard for
international law, has not only bought Trump
much-needed kudos domestically, getting
erstwhile political enemies to rally around the
Commander-in-Chief and thereby quelling the
allegations against him of being a Russian
stooge.
Moreover, Trump is sending out a
signal that he is prepared to use overwhelming
military force on any regime that is designated
an enemy, whether that be Syria, North Korea,
China or even Russia.
The aircraft carrier strike group
steaming toward the Korean Peninsula is the next
act in the «mad man» Trump show of force. It is
a chilling sign of «zero tolerance» to
designated US enemies, as well as zero tolerance
to evidence, facts, morals or international law.
The new Trump Doctrine is putting
the world on notice that the US is a rogue state
of the wildest proportions.
The
views expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Information Clearing House.
