What’s Trump’s plan on Syria?
On April 6th, 2017 President Trump authorized an attack on a Syrian government airfield. The justification for the attack was a gruesome chemical attack carried out by Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad on his own people. While I believe that the missile attack was an appropriate response to a truly evil act by the Syrian dictator Assad, Congress and the American people deserve to know the Trump Administration’s plan with regards to Assad. Following the attack the Trump administration has not been clearly on exactly what the plan is. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson stated that “Our priority is first the defeat of [the Islamic State group]… Once we can eliminate the battle against [the Islamic State group], conclude that, and it is going quite well, then we hope to turn our attention to cease-fire agreements between the regime and opposition forces,”. UN ambassador Nikki Haley claimed “We don’t see a peaceful Syria with Assad in there”. Secretary Tillerson and Ambassador Haley have contradicting positions regarding our policy in Syria, with Tillerson prioritizing defeating ISIS and Haley prioritizing getting Assad out of power. I believe the United States must look back on our past mistakes in Iraq, where Saddam was taken out of power, creating a vacuum which allowed radical islamists to take control. Which means that Tillerson’s strategy of defeating ISIS first and then dealing with Assad would better serve the interests of our country. While Ambassador Haley is certainly not wrong in saying that Assad needs to go, however removing Assad from power first risks a major conflict with Russia, who is a strong backer of Assad, which is certainly not in our best interests. To sum it up, thank you President Trump for responding to evil, however the American people need a coherent policy from you in regard to Syria, not just a knee-jerk reaction.
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Can we truly be sure Assad is behind this chemical attack, and not instead Syrian Rebels? After all, almost every picture of the carnage of the attack has been forged, seeing as these pictures show EMTs only wearing gas masks while handling Sarin-saturated bodies, which would result in their deaths through skin-to-skin Sarin poisoning. Also, back in 2006, Syrian rebels had actually planned to pin chemical attacks on the Assad Regime in order to defame them. This, to me, sounds like a fabricated event, or at least a terrible crime pinned to the wrong people.
I am unaware of any evidence that this attack was carried out by Syrian rebels. I hear your point that this did happen in 2006, however in 2013 Assad committed another chemical attack. I am not one to always believe everything the government/intelligence community tells us, since they have been wrong (Iraq WMD’s) before, however unless there is verified evidence which states that Assad was not behind the attack, I will believe that Assad did the attack. I believe your question should be directed to the President who launched the attack on the Syrian airbase on the premise that Assad was responsible for the attack. Thanks for your question.