I woke up this morning to the news I dreaded but knew was coming sooner or later: President Trump ordered cruise missile strikes on targets in Syria in “retaliation” for the rather shaky claims of a chemical weapon attack by Assad.
Like I said, I was fully expecting Trump to do something. He had painted himself into a corner with his bellicose tweets and to not do anything would have made him look weak. Or at least that is probably what Grima Wormtongue/John Bolton was whispering in his ear. Pre-Presidency Trump was very critical of this sort of thing but something happens to men when they realize they can send in the military on a whim. It happened to Nobel Peace Prize winning Obama who developed a near obsession with drone strikes that occasionally hit weddings. We never outgrow playing with plastic army men, as adults some of us play video games and some of us become President.
If there is a bright spot in the whole thing it is that Trump chose a largely face-saving and symbolic attack on facilities that I have to assume had any useful material, if there was some there in the first place, already removed. It was neocon theater, right down to Trump channeling W. Bush with his ironic tweet of “Mission Accomplished” this morning. As far as we can tell no one got hurt, especially no Russians, and the Russians so far haven’t done anything about it. It will make the rounds on the talk shows tomorrow morning, John Bolton and the other chickenhawk neocons can enjoy a postcoital cigarette and life goes on. It was a meaningless strike that served only to let Trump say he did something. That doesn’t change the fact that it was an act of war against a nation that poses no national security threat to us.
The cruise missiles launched so Trump could save face cost over a million bucks each and over 100 were launched. I wonder how many miles of a border wall you could pay for with a hundred million dollars?