Trump launches military strike against Syria

BipolarFuk

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The United States launched a military strike on a Syrian government target in retaliation for their chemical weapons attack on civilians earlier in the week.

On President Donald Trump's orders, US warships launched at least 50 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian government airbase where the warplanes that carried out the chemical attacks were based, US officials said.

The strikes are the first direct military action the US has taken against the leadership of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the country's six-year civil war and represent a substantial escalation of the US' military campaign in the region, which could be interpreted by the Syrian government as an act of war. The US began launching airstrikes in Syria in September 2014 under President Barack Obama as part of its coalition campaign against ISIS, but has only targeted the terrorist group and not Syrian government forces.

Trump met with his national security team before his dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Mar-a-Lago Thursday, where he made the decision to pull the trigger on the biggest military action of his presidency, an administration official says.

He sat through dinner with the President Xi as action was under way.

Defense Secretary James Mattis has been updating Trump about the missile strikes in Syria following his dinner with Xi, according to a US official.

Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Trump's national security adviser Gen. H.R. McMaster were with Trump at Mar-a-Lago at the time. Vice President Mike Pence remained in Washington, where he returned to the White House after dinner.

Trump's order to strike the Syrian government targets came a day after he said the chemical attacks -- whose grisly effects were broadcast worldwide where videos captured in the immediate aftermath -- "crossed a lot of lines for me" and said he felt a "responsibility" to respond.

"I will tell you it's already happened that my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much," Trump said.

"When you kill innocent children -- innocent babies -- babies -- little babies with a chemical gas that is so lethal, people were shocked to hear what gas it was, that crosses many, many lines. Beyond a red line, many, many lines," Trump said.

Trump's decision to launch the strikes, the most significant military action of his young presidency, came nearly four years after the US first concluded that Syrian forces had used chemical weapons in Syria. The Obama administration concluded that Syria had violated the "red line" Obama had set a year earlier in discussing the use of chemical weapons, but ultimately decided against military action against Syria in favor of a Russian-brokered deal to extricate the country's chemical weapons stockpile.

Trump at the time said the US should "stay the hell out of Syria" and urged Obama on Twitter to "not attack Syria" in the wake of the 2013 chemical attack.

"There is no upside and tremendous downside. Save your 'powder' for another (and more important) day," he tweeted in September 2013.

Trump repeatedly criticized Obama during his presidential campaign for not acting on his "red line" threat, but the real estate mogul also argued against deepening the US' military involvement in Syria, particularly as it related to Assad.

Trump argued last May in a TV interview that he would "go after ISIS big league," but said he did not support targeting Assad's regime, arguing the US has "bigger problems than Assad."

Syria's six-year civil war has claimed the lives of at least 400,000, according to a United Nations estimate released a year ago. More than 5 million Syrians have fled the country and more than 6 million more have been displaced internally, according to UN agencies.
 

Cotton

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I'm fine with air strikes.

No boots on the ground.
 

skidadl

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I'm really on the fence about this. What's the rush? Had it even been proven that Assad was behind this? Weren't peace talks moving along?
 

BipolarFuk

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Gotta do something when your approval ratings are in the 30s and falling.

Fire some missiles....watch the approval bump from the legions of hilljacks.
 

Cowboysrock55

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I'm really on the fence about this. What's the rush? Had it even been proven that Assad was behind this? Weren't peace talks moving along?

I mean watching shit like this is pretty brutal. My heart goes out to the Syrian people.

But I'm also of the opinion that we should stay the hell out of other countries business. So I don't know. I mean you can't let them gas their own people, it's a war crime, but you sure as shit better make sure you know what's going on before you do it. And you definitely better not start arming rebels and putting boots on the ground.
 

BipolarFuk

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Hey remember that time Obama asked for authorization to take out Assad and congress stood silent?
 

townsend

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This was impulsive and absolutely not something that should have been done without congressional approval. This isn't even like fighting a terrorist organization like ISIS that ostensibly intends to do America harm, and is operating within the borders of a friendly nation. We're talking about an assault on a sovereign nation.

Can we also talk about how Trump still doesn't have most of his national security, State Dept and defense Dept nominations made yet? We do not have an administration in place to back this kind of aggressive foreign policy. Even the dummy alt-righters understand that the gutted administration is an isolationist tactic, you can't have a interventionist government flying blind.
 

skidadl

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I mean watching shit like this is pretty brutal. My heart goes out to the Syrian people.

But I'm also of the opinion that we should stay the hell out of other countries business. So I don't know. I mean you can't let them gas their own people, it's a war crime, but you sure as shit better make sure you know what's going on before you do it. And you definitely better not start arming rebels and putting boots on the ground.
Have we ever been successful in the Middle East? Those people are crazy and I don't know if we can help. There has been some speculation that it wasn't Assad that launched the attack. I'm not plugged in enough to know but we need to tread carefully. I don't want sucked into something dumb.
 

Cowboysrock55

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Have we ever been successful in the Middle East? Those people are crazy and I don't know if we can help. There has been some speculation that it wasn't Assad that launched the attack. I'm not plugged in enough to know but we need to tread carefully. I don't want sucked into something dumb.
I thought Assad was basically claiming that the gas wasn't him, that it was "the rebels" stocks of gas that exploded from the bombing. Sort of sounded like a bullshit excuse to me. Especially for a guy with a history of this stuff.

But I agree with you, we are never successful. We take one evil man out and a new one grows to replace him. We love to try the "well lets arm the rebels" ploy, which basically always blows up in our face.
 

2233boys

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I am torn. The attack on civilians with banned weapons (more than once, targeting civilians & children) leads me to feel that a response was necessary. Was a unilateral response from us the right one? Was a military option the only option? I tend to believe that those weren’t the only two options, specifically since we weren’t attacked.

I was an Army Reservist, during peace time, and I consider myself a bit of a pacifist.
* I don’t believe military action should be our first choice.
* I do not believe that we need to be the world's police.
* I do not believe we should enter every battle. .

Also as a father of two children who are military age or about to be military age, I don’t want it for selfish reasons.

* I do believe diplomatic and humanitarian solutions are always better.
* I do not want to see us getting drawn into another war in the middle east to topple a dictator, those things don’t end well. It isn’t our place.

For far too long through Republican and Democratic administrations we have been trying to enforce our will with military strength, troops, drone strikes, air strikes, etc. It doesn’t and hasn’t worked and just creates animosity towards our country.

I am fearful of Russia’s response but hopeful that they will agree that Assad’s actions were wrong and demand action. Hopefully this will bring us to the table with them and others to create a peaceful outcome.
 
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