By: Lisa M. Hayes
I remember it like it was yesterday. It was March 22, 2003. I was listening to the coverage on the radio. The words shock and awe were so terrifying, so visceral, that I thought I was going to be sick. So, I pulled my car to the side of the road to let it all soak in.
That sick feeling in the pit of my stomach was warranted. 181,113 – 203,136 civilians died in that conflict. Total violent deaths including combatants are more than 288,000 before the conflict officially came to an end. Those numbers vary depending on the source. People are still dying there daily.
That was then, and this is now. What’s happening now is not the same. Don’t let media frenzy make you think differently. On Friday the U.S. in collaboration with the UK and France attacked Syrian chemical weapons sites. Early reports say three people may have been injured.
This isn’t the first time Trump has ordered missile strikes in Syria. It happened last year, early in his Presidency. After which, we learned Trump had notified Putin, who of course notified Assad, who then moved all valuable targets away from the targeted airbases. That was a coordinated attack of a different kind, but in the most critical ways possible, Friday’s missile strike was more of the same.
Reuters reported late Fridays night: “The Syrian government and its allies have absorbed a U.S.-led attack on Saturday and the targeted sites were evacuated days ago thanks to a warning from Russia, a senior official in a regional alliance that backs Damascus said.
“We have absorbed the strike”, the official told Reuters.
“We had an early warning of the strike from the Russians … and all military bases were evacuated a few days ago,” the official said. Around 30 missiles were fired in the attack, and a third of them were shot down, the official said.
And why did they get the warning from Russia? Because Trump briefed Russia in advance of the strike. In fact, one might say Donald J. Trump coordinated with Russia again.
Make no mistake, this strike was more statement-making than it was disabling to Assad’s regime. It didn’t even put a dent in the Assad regime. It was a minor inconvenience for one of the most brutal dictators on the planet. For Donald Trump, the statement was about more than chemical weapons, and we all know it.
Assad and Putin have a long-standing relationship. By participating in an allied attack, Trump wants to send a message to the U.S. and the world that he’s not Putin’s pawn. Limited strikes on military targets are more like a whisper than a roar. It’s grandstanding. It was a very expensive grandstand though with a price tag in the neighborhood of 100 million dollars spent on one night’s worth of fireworks.
This attack comes at the end of the most devasting week for Trump politically since he took office. The walls are closing in on him in every direction. Almost everyone expected Trump to do what he does when he feels threatened or cornered. Everyone expected he’d whip up some kind of distraction. Most people feared he’d do it by firing Rod Rosenstein.
Instead, Trump got trigger happy days after another one of Putin’s pawns launched another chemical attack on his own people. You might wonder who’s really calling the shots from a timing perspective.
Russia has warned of dire consequences for any such attack. That might be notable considering Russia has it’s hands on the switch of our power grids. Our punishment could be infinitely more devastating than the strike itself. However, even knowing that Trump plowed recklessly ahead without congressional approval or a fully functioning cabinet.
Although this was sold as an isolated one time attack, even that appears shaky. Top military officials, including Defense Secretary James Mattis, warned President Donald Trump during an afternoon meeting Thursday that he risks escalating US involvement in Syria if he goes forward with the type of aggressive bombing campaign he has pressed for over the past week, according to US and western officials briefed on the conversation.
Trump has pushed military leaders to develop plans for a sustained assault on Syrian regime targets in response to last weekend’s chemical attack, the officials said. But Mattis and other members of the President’s national security team cautioned Trump during the meeting that such a strategy could pull the US into direct conflict with Russia and Iran.
Trump doesn’t care. Because if you’re sitting in Trump’s chair, the only thing better than a fiery one-off distraction would be full-blown war.
Wag the Dog anyone?
If you haven’t seen it, go ahead and rent it today. It will make you laugh and cry and want to hide under your bed or in your bunker.
War is a thing. Missiles are real. What happened on Friday happened, but it wasn’t shock and awe. It was a well-executed distraction. The media has to cover it, but we don’t have to buy it. What we have to do is get to the polls and vote in numbers like we’ve never seen before. November 2018 isn’t that far away. You might start making a plan to get to the polls to vote now in case you have to do it in the dark.
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