Dem senator: Trump's Syria policy 'immoral and hypocritical'

[TomCADem]

Source: The Hill

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Saturday ripped into President Trump's decision to order a missile launch on a Syrian air base, calling his approach to Syria "immoral and hypocritical."

* * *

"The actions Trump took leading up to Assad’s chemical weapons attack, as well as the all-important and totally unanswered question of what comes next, highlight the administration’s immoral and hypocritical approach to violence in the region." The Connecticut Democrat pointed to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's statement last week that Syrian President Bashar Assad's future as his country's leader would be "decided by the Syrian people."

That position, Murphy wrote, was an abdication of the Obama administration's position that Assad should be removed.

Murphy argued that the Assad regime took Tillerson's announcement as "green light" to carry out Tuesday's chemical weapons attack in Syria's rebel-held Idlib Province, which killed more than 70 civilians, including numerous children.

Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/327972-dem-senator-trumps-syria-policy-hypocritical-and-immoral

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. Trump regime self-contradictory. Two foreign policies, no coherent strategy. . . nt

[NastyRiffraff]

2. Tillerson definitely gave Assad permission

to do whatever he pleased, contrary to years of U.S. policy. No doubt he did it with Dump's approval, if not by his orders.

Dump and his entire administration is dangerous and many in the media is acting like this is normal.

[David__77]

3. Assad's future should be up to the Syrian people.

There are, in fact, quite a lot of genuine supporters of Assad among the Syrian people.

[CTyankee]

4. My senator, Chris Murphry, is one of the best new senators in the Senate.

he is a talent for the future. Let's support him either as Elizabeth Warren's running mate or in his next campaign for U.S. Senator from CT.

[ancianita]

5. Murphy, in effect, excuses Assad, who knows biochemical attacks are war crimes.

Last edited Sun Apr 9, 2017, 08:22 AM - Edit history (1)

I despise Trump, but to jump on Trump is to ignore that anything Assad did is totally on Assad.

Neither Assad nor any other country may interpret anything said by this administration as "permission" or "indifference," or any other cover for what was an international crime.

[TomCADem]

6. Please. Trump Loudly Opposed Intervention...

...when over a thousand Syrians were gassed. Trump repeatedly claimed that by attacking Assad, US will end up fighting Russia, and just last week the Trump administration declared that it would not seek to oust Assad. Talk about mixed messages.

https://www.rt.com/news/366647-trump-syria-isis-russia-relations/

US President-elect Donald Trump has confirmed that he will most likely abandon the Obama administration policy on Syria to seek a possible rapprochement with Russia on the issue of Assad. “I’ve had an opposite view of many people regarding Syria,” the 70-year-old Republican told the Wall Street Journal in his first interview since the election.

* * *
Trump, on the other hand, said on Friday that the US should be focused on fighting Islamic State, instead of pursuing regime change in Syria.

“My attitude was you’re fighting Syria, Syria is fighting ISIS, and you have to get rid of ISIS. Russia is now totally aligned with Syria, and now you have Iran, which is becoming powerful, because of us, is aligned with Syria... Now we’re backing rebels against Syria, and we have no idea who these people are.”

* * *

The president-elect warned that if the US attacks Assad, “we end up fighting Russia, fighting Syria.”

[ancianita]

7. While we politically fuss about Agent Orange, Putin makes the same moves in Syria he made

in Ukraine, with unidentifiable "rebels," (couldn't be some mercenaries, could it) and with the same result -- control over oil pipelines and a port -- after taking out ISIS.

To me, it's a mess that Assad has to organize. If Syria's aligning with Putin gains the inhabitants some peace, it won't gain Assad an improved economy, just puppet status, and will put Putin in competition with Saudi oil.

Anything can happen with Trump and the military, which now sends a carrier group toward North Korea.

All this goes on while many in DC try to teach a drowning man to swim.

RT, eh? Hmm...

[TomCADem]

9. Foreign Policy Review (2016) - Trumps Syria Strategy Would Be a Disaster

Isn't RT a Russian-State media outlet. That articles shows how the Russians viewed Trump. Conversely, the article below shows how Trump's policy was seen from the West. Thus, but Russia and the West saw Trump's policies as emboldening and supporting Syria.

So, while Assad pulled the trigger, Trump has long been suggesting that he would be supportive of Assad as an ally against Isis, particularly since has also long portrayed Syrian refugees as terrorists.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/11/17/trumps-syria-strategy-would-be-a-disaster/

The president-elect wants to ally with Assad and Russia to fight the Islamic State – but he’s going to end up empowering extremists and causing chaos across the Middle East.

Late last week, President-elect Donald Trump explained for the first time since his election victory his position on the crisis in Syria. In his remarks, he laid out his determination to ramp up the fight against the Islamic State and to cease support to those fighting President Bashar al-Assad’s regime:

I’ve had an opposite view of many people regarding Syria.… My attitude was you’re fighting Syria; Syria is fighting ISIS; and you have to get rid of ISIS. Russia is now totally aligned with Syria, and now you have Iran, which is becoming powerful, because of us, is aligned with Syria.… Now we’re backing rebels against Syria, and we have no idea who these people are.

This is an extraordinary simplification of a highly complex crisis. But the president-elect’s views on Syria do evince some consistency — just not the consistency he apparently intends. Trump says he wants to focus on destroying the Islamic State. The main effect of the policies he describes, however, would be to eliminate the moderate opposition to the Assad regime and to empower extremism.

Before considering all the disastrous effects of Trump’s policy, we should examine why even his stated justification for it doesn’t hold water. A brief history lesson should suffice to demonstrate the Assad regime’s lack of counterterrorism qualifications. This is the government whose intelligence apparatus methodically built al Qaeda in Iraq, and then the Islamic State in Iraq, into a formidable terrorist force to fight U.S. troops in that country from 2003 to 2010. Hundreds of American soldiers would probably still be alive today if it had not been for Assad’s state-backed support to the Islamic State’s direct predecessors.

[ancianita]

10. Trump's justification for his non-existent policy doesn't hold water because the world knows it

gets one horrible bad actor, Assad, for another, Putin. How that plays out depends on whether Trump lasts and how the EU acts.

History does bear on events in Syria. It's obvious that the West hasn't dealt well with the Middle East's internal conflicts -- mercenaries, military solutions, etc. U.S. and EU leaders have still been eager to pretend to their people that these conflicts are local -- mostly religious or political -- right before leaders switch to a "regime change" military solution. Suddenly war drama gets spotlighted, hiding any global capitalist interests that amplified local conflicts to begin with. I realize how broad brush this is.

As Syria's dust appears to settle, Assad will be out, Trump's future "deals" will appear to support "engagement" and "reset" policies of previous presidents with Putin and his 'approved' Kremlin oligarchs. It should be clear to everyone, after Crimea and Ukraine, that U.S. engagement and reset policies failed. They're now seen as appeasement by those who really know Putin's KGB authoritarian world. Right now, Trump is happy to characterize him as a bull dog.

Putin deserved to get kicked out of the G7. But he still advances his wealth interests with PR. RT will promote all the so-called good he does for Syrians desperate for even an unjust peace. These two -- boss Agent Orange and boss Poot -- want to gain status points with other leaders, but those leaders hold that shakeups they create are bad for business -- unless they want to corner black market wealth.

It's lipstick on global pigs all around. Blood and migration for those trapped in the arena.

[The Wizard]

11. He's an immoral cretin

The word immoral should always be used when discussing Trumputin.