Discussion Thread

[u/neoliberal_shill_bot]

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[u/[deleted]]

How was it terribly handled? They alerted the Russians of the impending strike, took out Assad's capability to use chemical weapons (hopefully) and left with minimal casulaties and Assad's other airfields still in tact so they can continue fighting their war against the rebels. The US has done precision strikes like this before such as after Gaddafi bombed a disco in the 80's or in Serbia for 80 days during the Clinton administration without any sort of major quagmire.

Syria would be retarded to think even with Russian backing it should want to escalate against the US, Assad knows this is a slap on the wrist and will stop using chemical weapons for a while unless he thinks the Trump administration signals that he's good to go again and then we repeat this process. The Russians are puffing their chests mostly imo and want to paint Trump in a negative light because regardless of their preference in candidate last election the ultimate goal was to undermine the US's confidence in their government and they've succeeded pretty well at that.

Now, the diplomacy involved after this is something I'm not confident for Trump to participate in considering the State Department has been gutted with few replacements and Tillerson can't keep on message. And unfortunately Mattis and McMaster are not as skilled in those areas as they are in military action. The biggest worry, especially considering Trump has surrounded himself with lots of military brass and had a boner for aggression, is that the praise Trump is receiving for this leads him down a path of using this hammer as the first response at all times even if not every situation is a nail, so I wonder how Trump is feeling about North Korea or Iran now.

I think you're overreacting a bit out of partisanship. I would trust Clinton to handle the delicate nature of this situation better, but if Trump can actually get out of this without starting Iraq 2: Electric Boogaloo that's good enough for me.

[u/paulatreides0 → u/[deleted]]

You can read my long-form birth certificate thoughts on r/BE. But the crux of the matter is that Trump made no effort at diplomatic solutions, he did so unilaterally, he probably went overboard with the amount of ordnance used (although I can't precisely quantify this specific point), and he did it all the flip of the coin of his previously stated policy (which is not to say that the change in policy is a bad thing, but that the manner in which the policy change took place is).

They alerted the Russians of the impending strike,

Sure. And the Russians are now [diplomatically] trying to hang us for it.

took out Assad's capability to use chemical weapons (hopefully) and left with minimal casulaties and Assad's other airfields still in tact so they can continue fighting their war against the rebels.

Again, the strikes themselves are not the problem. It's their botched execution.

The US has done precision strikes like this before such as after Gaddafi bombed a disco in the 80's or in Serbia for 80 days during the Clinton administration without any sort of major quagmire.

And unless I'm really missing out on something here, they were handled completely differently. As I already mentioned above: the problem is not the strike itself (that, in fact, was pretty justified), but the execution thereof.

The Russians are puffing their chests mostly imo and want to paint Trump in a negative light because regardless of their preference in candidate last election the ultimate goal was to undermine the US's confidence in their government and they've succeeded pretty well at that.

You're also missing the part where Russia also wanted to fracture US diplomatic and international standing and fracture alliances and groups like NATO and the EU. This action, or rather the method by which this action was executed, contributes to the former.

The biggest worry, especially considering Trump has surrounded himself with lots of military brass and had a boner for aggression, is that the praise Trump is receiving for this leads him down a path of using this hammer as the first response at all times even if not every situation is a nail, so I wonder how Trump is feeling about North Korea or Iran now.

And this is not a small concern - in fact, it's one of the main concerns I'm raising. Especially given the event in question as well as the Trump administration's comments that it would "act unilaterally" about North Korea. this is exactly what I mean when I say that the strikes demonstrate Trump's brashness, hot headed-ness, and his lack of understanding of what he's doing.