Why did Donald Trump bomb Syria explained: forget humanitarian mission, think geopolitical, think economics, think military and think media pr.
In the days since Donald Trump pressed forward in launching 59 Tomahawk missiles on a military air base in Syria, the deep state and it’s media pr handlers have been awash to desperately explain that it was all done because the lives of ‘beautiful babies’ were extinguished. Which is to wonder, since when did Donald Trump suddenly become a humanitarian freedom fighter?
In the weeks and months prior to Tuesday’s sadistic attack on civilians, Trump had made it clearly known he had no sympathy for the people of Syria, and to boot was adamant that he would keep Syrian refugees from fleeing the ravages of civil war into the United States.
Yet somehow come Thursday the pictures of dead and injured children which have always been there to look at, not just in Syria but in other surrounding Middle East countries with ongoing wars/incursions being perpetrated ad hoc (Yemen, Bahrain, Iraq, the Kurdish region and Afghanistan down the block) that Trump and his team were moved and outraged by the evil deeds of Syria’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad.
Thank you @ajplus.
Hospitals are overwhelmed with victims of chemical attacks in #Syria‘s Idlib province.Help us: https://t.co/f04xYY7u42 pic.twitter.com/uqyhTopiOH
— Dr Shajul Islam (@DrShajulIslam) April 5, 2017
Which is to ask cynically, since when did the US ever care about dying children and the pouring blood of civilians in any Middle East country when there is so much gas and oil and unrest to ferment in order to gain geopolitical edge and cement imperial hegemony?
Nearly four years ago, the Syrian military conducted a chemical weapons attack near Damascus, killing more than 1,400 people. Trump, the private citizen, went on Twitter and urged President Barack Obama not to intervene, saying ‘there is no upside and tremendous downside.’
At the time, Trump was an outsider, who from time to time, openly donated bribed to both Republicans and Democrats. But now occupying the role of the head of government as an insider, his mandate is to now directly curry the needs of his constituency. The war makers, the oil and gas companies, the finance industry and other players who would be ready to help in the ongoing wealth and solidification of those entities.
And then there might be other legitimate reasons why Trump fired off missiles in an all but barren airfield (never mind the hour warning he gave to the ‘enemy’….).
Noted the chicagotribune: ‘All of it seemed to happen too hastily, without adequate time to develop a plan for the aftermath. But on the other hand, it seemed like perfect timing for a president who two months into office had the lowest public approval rating of any new U.S. president. And as of Friday, a Gallup poll found that only 41 percent of Americans thought Trump is doing a good job.’
But if Trump thinks he has problem with the American public, from whether he coopted with the Russians, low polling numbers (alas…) to whether he has the intellectual and emotional chops to be president and his rabid assault on minorities, immigrants and those on the low end of the economic rung (amazing how he hoodwinked these desperate voters to vote for him), then one ought to think bigger than that.
The former reality tv honcho also has problems with how the rest of the world sees him. Not just a stooge for the neocons (have a look and you will notice that the swamp he promised to drain is happily slushing in his private party living room in Mar-a-Lago this very weekend), Trump has to prove he has the cahootas to take on other outside world forces who don’t take kindly to US imperialist notions and expansion plans.
On Wednesday, North Korea fired yet another ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan, likely to test of the novice American president. It came on the heels of two other launches that occurred during March.
Trump’s response has been to sit on his hands and invite further temptation at other states who might be keen to see how far they might go in challenging US hegemony and carving out their own bounty. If the US can play the carving ‘the world for me’ game, surely why can’t other states not beholden to US interests?
Which of course introduces us to China as well, with China’s President Xi Jinping sitting in the living room as Trump pressed the ‘bomb Syria button’, a not so subtle ‘fxck you’ to the head of China’s state with whom America finds itself fearing more than Russia in the pursuit of economic hegemony and regional supremacy. A conversation you wont be hearing anytime soon from either FOX or MSNBC.
Talking of show time (a jingle Trump dreams at 3am in the morning), let’s have a look at what quartz had to say on Trump’s bombastic taunting behavior and see whether we can make sense of why Trump really launched a ‘retribution attack’:
‘The usual international coalition possesses no will. The facts on the ground don’t allow for easy extraction. A palatable quasi-democrat isn’t waiting to step in. And even if those conditions were met, Russian president Vladimir Putin would make the price too high. If Putin went along with Assad’s ouster, he would further expose to the world his own excesses of militarism and murder.’
Which is to wonder, was it all just a show of face, to get the world thinking that the US actually has moral fiber and cares about children dying? if not by bullets, bombs and drone missions (200 civilians dead last week at Mosul, but let’s keep that one a secret) but only chemical weapons- only then we ‘conveniently’ react?
The answer; not on your life and don’t let the desperate front page stories convince you otherwise.
Reflected dissident Syrian-Canadian writer, Yazan Al-Saadi on democracynow on Friday: ‘I also would like to highlight that regardless of the fact that it’s the first so-called U.S. response on the Syrian regime, the U.S. has been bombing Syria since 2014, killing hundreds of civilians.’
Adding, noting Russia’s support of the Syrian regime and Putin’s ire at US intervention:
‘Both these superpowers, with other reactionary forces in the region, do not give a damn about Syrian self-determination nor justice for Syrians, like they don’t give a damn about other communities in the region, from Bahrain to Yemen to Palestine. So, I have no hope, with the Putin regime or the Trump regime, in whatever they do. They can say whatever they want, but their actions have proven that they really don’t care. And they were just—it’s basically barks between each other. And it’s not really going to matter much for the people on the ground who are dying.’
Which is to say, perhaps the ambit of Syria and its children is nothing more than a show stage with the lives of civilians nothing more than inconvenient side characters who one is forced to pay attention to while in the pursuit of riches, dominance and regional superiority- the real reasons why any empire, from the Roman empire, to the former Dutch or English empires (think South Africa and other colonial states) has sought to exert any influence or action.
After all, let’s not forget just four days before Tuesday’s gas attack, Trump’s Secretary of State, former oil EXXON ceo, Rex Tillerson signaled that the U.S. had no quarrel with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, remaining in power (see what happens when you publicly signal your willingness to tolerate antisocial behavior….)
And the sobering reality?
Reports qz: ‘It was a good show that just two days after Assad’s sarin gas attack, US president Donald Trump responded with a strike of 59 missiles at Shayrat air base in Homs province. He allowed the world to vent horror and anger at Assad. But hours later Syrian jets were taking off from Shayrat: Trump had made an elegant announcement of moral purpose, and a stated new policy of defending innocent women and children. But the words were rendered empty and self-serving by the bombing’s light damage—the runways, the taxiways, the parking areas are intact. Assad can go on with his war.’
And once again each state goes on the ginger task of extracting resources, influence, wealth and neatly sidestepping the human disasters that come along once in a while, pretending to show face, while remembering who really calls the shots and the mission statement of one’s office: the entrenched power elite, whose aspiration of domination and expansion, at almost any cost…..give or take a few dozen ‘beautiful dead children’….remains preeminent.
.@RepTedLieu: Trump is distracting us from his FBI investigation with the Syria attack pic.twitter.com/C4a8bb3XW3
— The Opposition (@oppstn) April 8, 2017
Congratulations to our great military men and women for representing the United States, and the world, so well in the Syria attack.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 8, 2017
President Trump is sending a clear message: the apology tour is over. We fight when you rattle our cage. #syriaattack
— Tomi Lahren (@TomiLahren) April 7, 2017
We bombed Syria last night, Sweden attack today and a Supreme Court Justice spot was just stolen but #Nationalbeerday is trending #1.
— Sam Esmail (@samesmail) April 7, 2017
