What is the Trump administration’s policy on the Syrian civil war? I don’t have a clue. And it doesn’t seem like the White House does either.
The chemical weapons attack perpetrated by the Assad regime in Khan Sheikhoun, a town in the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib, was a shock to the conscience of the world. President Trump, like so many others, was clearly shaken by the pictures of dead children, ghostly white, having died at the hands of poisonous gas delivered from their own government.
Trump on whether Syrian gas attack crosses a red line: "Many, many lines, beyond a red line" pic.twitter.com/dKhlEFOZwq— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) April 5, 2017
Nobody goes from considering Syrian President Bashar al-Assad a second tier priority to hinting at his removal in less than a week without having undergone some sort of emotional transformation.
But the 180-degree shift in Trump’s tone reveals something else. And that is the president doesn’t know what he wants to do. It’s not that he won’t share it with the American people, but that he is genuinely flummoxed about how to proceed on the toughest problem he has faced since sitting in the big chair — tougher than reforming the tax code, passing a replacement for Obamacare, or defending Bill O’Reilly.
Let’s be frank: the administration is all over the place. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson tells reporters that regime change in Syria is the official U.S. policy, all but outright saying that U.S. warplanes are heading towards Syrian airspace. But in the same breath, he hints that Assad’s resignation must be achieved through political means.
At the same moment Tillerson is making a public appearance, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster are sitting down with Trump and ticking through the list of military options available to the U.S. in the event that he wants to pull the trigger and start launching cruise missiles.
The inter-agency process is a chaotic mess. But hopefully the process is strong enough to work through all of choices and filter through all of the information coming in. The last thing the administration should do is rush headfirst into a decision, one way or the other.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a fellow at Defense Priorities. His opinions are his own.
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