Syria Disintegrating: Part 2

[OttoVonBismarck]

The big thing to keep in mind about Trump is just that he literally knows about as much about most issues facing the Presidency as your dad who spends 4-5 hours a night screaming at Fox News. He's also incredibly lazy. This means that in many respects his advisers are more important in his Presidency than any we've seen in awhile, Bush had a little bit of this going on but not nearly to this degree.

The most significant development I see here is for whatever reason in the battle between some of the non-crazies he put in the admin (Mattis & McMaster) and Bannon, Bannon appears to have lost, because enforcing norms on chemical weapons use would be a "globalist" action. Where we should have some degree of concern, is in my mind the reason Trump did this was probably 90% he's a little boy over-awed by the big time military resumes of Mattis & McMaster when it comes to something in their bailiwick. It worked out this time, but a President being uncritical of military advice is how we got into some bad situations in the past (although I think most modern generals, raised on the bread and butter story of how fucked up Vietnam was, are way less bellicose than the brass of the 50s/60s); while I disagreed with Obama's decision to do nothing on chemical weapons use by Assad I liked that we had a President smart enough to look at the situation and make his own decision. The unfortunate thing with Trump is he really doesn't have those capacities.

[Berkut]

Yep.

I am not unhappy with the basic idea (the execution seems pretty fucked up), but I suspect it was not arrived at for anything like the right reasons.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Yeah, the big fear with the Trump administration is there is no coherent process that we've seen for making decisions. It literally looks like there's a combination of:

1. Who does Trump like that day? He'll take their advice. Early on he liked Bannon a lot, now it seems less so. He was keeping Mattis at arm's length early, but now seems to be moving Mattis into the inner circle. Unfortunately it seems his reasons for these shifts are mercurial/personal based and thus could change with his changing mood.

2. Who was the last person Trump spoke to? There's worrying evidence Trump is highly susceptible to just going along with the last thing he heard, which means the range of potential choices is pretty scary depending on who that last person is.

3. What does he think is good for Trump. The answer to this is ever-shifting as well. Trump has decent political instincts obviously or he wouldn't have won the Republican primary and the Presidency, but his instincts in this regard have lead to struggles in his Presidency primarily because he now has to do more than just decide what things to say to fire up his supporters, he has to actually take actions and he quickly has found he has no idea what to do for most of this stuff. So he's in the weird position of having to decide which person who sort of knows what they're talking about to go with, and he just has limited capacities to do that well.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Ezra Kelin over at Vox said it best (I agree with him on Obama and Trump here):

Obama's policy on Syria was perpetually paralyzed by fear of escalation. Trump's policy on Syria is volatile precisely because he doesn't seem to have thought through questions of escalation. This is a foreign policy based on intuition and emotion, and there is danger in that.

[Admiral Yi]

Trump has decent political instincts obviously or he wouldn't have won the Republican primary and the Presidency

He doesn't have a clue about how to reach people outside his base of hillbillies and blue collar yahoos.

Wonder how this shambolic PR missile strike will play out.  Will he try to pretend he didn't pre-arrange it with Poutine?

[FunkMonk]

AFP and Reuters are reporting Syrian aircraft launching missions from the airbase bombed yesterday.

Lol Donald wow

[FunkMonk]

Missile strike, which did little to nothing, will bring Donald the praise and admiration of DC and CNN talking heads. Sad!

[alfred russel]

AFP and Reuters are reporting Syrian aircraft launching missions from the airbase bombed yesterday.

Lol Donald wow

It seems the Russians haven't lost their WWII institutional knowledge of how to quickly get bombed airfields operational.

[viper37]

Early on he liked Bannon a lot, now it seems less so.

He was apparently pissed off at "President Bannon" jokes

[derspiess]

Sorry if it's already been said, but President Trump should make Assad pay for the cruise missiles.

[HVC]

Early on he liked Bannon a lot, now it seems less so.

He was apparently pissed off at "President Bannon" jokes

Yeah, all the political bickering and haggling, and its SNL that can make the president change his mind

[Valmy]

Sorry if it's already been said, but President Trump should make Assad pay for the cruise missiles.

Damn. Well done Spicey

[Jacob]

This just in:

JUST IN: Syrian warplanes take off from air base hit by U.S., carry out strikes in Homs countryside - Syrian observatory for human rights

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/850425431899680768

So... $80M to disable an airbase for less than 24 hours? Seems a little wasteful.

[Berkut]

This just in:

JUST IN: Syrian warplanes take off from air base hit by U.S., carry out strikes in Homs countryside - Syrian observatory for human rights

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/850425431899680768

So... $80M to disable an airbase for less than 24 hours? Seems a little wasteful.

Assad is going to be pissed when he gets the bill.

[Admiral Yi]

So I wonder if some Navy dudes somewhere got an order to target exactly 600 meters north of a Syrian airfield.