April 7, 2017 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
21:44
3644 President Donald Trump Bombs Syria
On the 100th anniversary of the United States entry into World War I, President Donald Trump targeted a Syrian air base, launching over 50 Tomahawk cruise missiles and destroying the facility. United States Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has also alluded to an international coalition forcing the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. After campaigning on a foreign policy without entangling foreign wars and nation-building, many Trump supporters feel betrayed and angry. Your support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
So I'm talking to you recording in the early morning, the wee hours, of April 7th, 2017.
Yesterday, of course, April 6th, 2017, was 100 years to the exact day from the date, April 6th, 1917, that America entered the First World War.
Yesterday, April 6th, 2017, President Donald Trump ordered a cruise missile strike against a military airbase in Syria because they say, or the government says, the Pentagon says, in response to a chemical weapons attack supposed to have been carried out by the Syrian government earlier in the week.
At 8.40pm on 6th April 2017, The U.S. launched 59 Tomahawk land attack missiles at the Shairat airfield, which is in western Syria.
The strike lasted merely minutes.
The ramifications may well last decades.
The missiles were targeted at, and the claims are that they hit aircraft shelters, petroleum, aircraft themselves, ammunition, storage areas for logistics, defense systems, and radars.
According to the Pentagon, the US military took significant care in the hopes of avoiding any human casualties.
They told Russia ahead of time, of course, Russia, an ally of Assad and a bunch of other countries, that they planned these strikes and the targets ahead of time.
There were Russian troops located at the airbase that was targeted.
Nobody knows for sure if they were still there during the strikes.
Now this gas attack incident, the supposed attack upon civilians by chemical weapons, remains somewhat of an open-ended question.
So there's an organization for the prohibition of chemical weapons and they've just started to have a look at the incident and are a long way away from assigning any kind of clear responsibility.
However, despite this Lack of on-the-ground information, U.S. officials and British and, of course, French officials came out, trotted out a soup-to-nuts narrative, saying that it was Assad without a doubt.
Although, Rex Tillerson, Trump's Secretary of State, the headline in the article was...
There is no doubt that Assad is responsible, but in the interview he said, there's no doubt in our mind that Assad is responsible.
Now Russia has put forward what they perceive as what happened.
That there was a conventional airstrike that caused a leak in a cache of chemical weapons held by the rebels fighting against Assad.
So, this is what happened.
Aircraft struck Chemical weapons being stored in a rebel facility, or being manufactured in a rebel facility.
Now, the Pentagon says, well, we bombed this airbase because we saw the planes take off on the radar, and they saw the bombs on the radar from a Syrian warplane, and so what?
Conventional bombs and chemical bombs look exactly the same on a radar.
So, even if all that's true, doesn't matter.
Discredit what Russia says happened.
Now, Donald Trump, of course, to some degree, like George W. Bush, campaigned on not being the world's policeman, on no more regime changes, on no more useless foreign wars.
However, Thursday, Secretary of State Tillerson joined The conversation saying of Assad, quote, it would seem that there would be no role for him to govern the Syrian people.
That seems to smack of regime change to me.
Trump supporters, many Trump supporters are appalled and angry and feel betrayed.
There are some people who are praising Assad.
Trump's launching of these missiles, the raining down of $100 million worth of military hardware.
So people who were in favor of Trump's attack, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Paul Ryan, a whole bunch of leftists, and, don't you know, two other groups quite keen on what Donald Trump has done, what President Trump has done, Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Big fans.
The Trump administration has made claims that it is working to put together an international coalition to depose Bashar al-Assad from power, to remove him from power.
Now that's 2017 Trump.
When Obama was facing down Syria in 2013 over Claims of the use of chemical weapons had turned out to be false.
It was not Assad who had ordered this.
The Saudis had sold a bunch of chemical weapons to the rebels who had mishandled them, and that's what happened.
So, in 2013, when tweeting about this, Donald Trump wrote the following.
The president must get congressional approval before attacking Syria.
Big mistake if he does not.
It was 30th of August, 2013.
Big mistake to attack Syria without congressional approval.
Shortly thereafter, Donald Trump, 2013, tweeted, If the U.S. attacks Syria and hits the wrong targets, killing civilians, there will be worldwide hell to pay.
Stay away and fix broken U.S. 2nd September 2013.
Shortly thereafter, 2013, Donald Trump, pre-president, tweeted the following.
President Obama, do not attack Syria.
There is no upside and tremendous downside.
Save your, quote, powder for another and more important day.
7th September, 2013.
What does it mean?
To talk about regime change in Syria.
What does it mean?
I don't know.
I don't understand.
Nobody can explain it to anyone in any sensible manner.
What does it mean?
You go in there and you invade and you kill him or you drag him off and you try him as happened with Saddam Hussein.
You find him in a spider hole, you try him and you kill him.
It's been tried in the Middle East a bunch of times before.
How has it worked out?
Regime change in the future.
What does that mean?
You can't really affect regime change with missiles, now can you?
Assad has already proven that his government can withstand blockades and it can withstand sanctions.
Trump's administration says getting a coalition together to politically remove Assad.
Politically remove.
What does that mean?
What does that mean?
I don't understand the processes.
Now, I could wave a magic wand and say, well, President Trump is in possession of so much amazing information that I'm sure it makes sense what he's doing.
But I can't get there.
I can't get there, my friends.
Maybe you can.
Maybe you can explain it to me.
I'll check out the comments.
I can't get there.
Because even if everything is true, even if Assad did use chemical weapons against his own people, killing dozens of them, why is that America's business fundamentally?
Lots of other countries in the region, if they feel very upset about it, can do something about it if they want.
What business is it of America's, even if it's all true?
And I don't even think that it is.
Maybe it's a way of pushing back against the Trump is Putin's puppet, Marussia.
Maybe it's a way of pushing back against that.
Well, you know, we attacked Russia's ally.
How do you like that kind of independence?
But that's not going to stop the narrative, you understand?
Appeasement causes escalation.
It's not going to stop the narrative.
If Trump did what he did to push back against the you're a slave to Russia narrative, all that he's done is prove that the narrative works, which means it's going to be deployed again and again and again.
If you can push the president's buttons so that he'll push...
Missile buttons, well, you're going to keep hitting those buttons if that's what you want.
Maybe he appeases the neocons.
Well, I bombed some people, now give me what I want domestically.
But if he bombs people because they've been withholding or pushing back against his domestic policies, he's just emboldening them and encouraging them to do more.
Fine, stop crying, I'll give you some candy.
Oh great, if I cry, I get candy.
Now, the administration, Trump's administration, do say that nothing else is going to happen until we decide further or whatever.
I don't think there's going to be any immediate escalation from here.
Some of the talk that's floating around that they're going to try and take down the Russian air defense system so that...
Air power is going to have freer play.
I don't.
I don't see that happening.
Again, I'm no expert.
I'm just telling you what I think.
This may all change tomorrow.
It's late.
I'm just telling you what is going on in my mind at the moment.
2013 Trump was pre the ring of power.
Power corrupts!
I know, I know power corrupts.
But not everyone equally at the same rate.
Has he succumbed to the lure, to the power of being able to bark an order and have land on the other side of the planet burst into gouts of hellish flame?
I've never had that power.
I dare say you haven't.
What's it like to have that kind of power?
What's it like?
Trump talked a lot about dead kids.
It's horrible.
It's horrible.
I don't know that it's a hundred million dollars worth of military hardware, blowing things sky high, risking the death of soldiers of a nuclear power escalating things in the region.
I don't know that it's that kind of tragic.
I mean, look, let's be frank with each other, you and I. Everybody knows...
The dozens of children starve to death every minute.
We still go about our day.
Terrible things happen in the world.
Governments do atrocious things to their own people.
It happens on a regular basis.
It happens in America.
It happens outside of America.
It happens all over the world.
You can't play whack-a-mole with your Tomahawk missiles trying to eradicate evil from the earth.
An extremity of self-defense is a justification for violence.
But in what way was America attacked?
Even if Assad did gas his own people, in what way was America attacked?
The initiation of force, going abroad in pursuit of monsters to destroy.
It's the old saying that Nietzsche had, be careful when you hunt monsters that you do not yourself become a monster.
Americans are shocked, I think.
Pretty appalled, and not just Americans, but others.
There's something that I think has come out pretty clearly yesterday.
You see, Trump was elected for jobs, for trade, for cutting taxes, for fixing immigration, for building a wall, for controlling unvetted immigrants coming in from dangerous countries and so on.
And none of that's happened yet.
He's faced endless obstacles.
Oh, Obamacare, repealing Obamacare, replacing him with something better.
Can't get anything done in the domestic policies that he was elected by an overwhelming majority in Electoral College.
He can't get done domestically, which is really what the Americans, American people care about the most.
He can't get done what they elected him to do.
Judges in Hawaii.
Don't have enough people in the Senate.
Who knows?
And at this point, who cares?
The reason being, he can't get the domestic policies pushed through or changed or altered.
He can't repeal or pass laws that the American public voted him in to do it.
It's so slow.
It's so constipated.
It's like trying to jog through deep water jello in a nightmare.
Can't get anything done.
It takes months.
It may take years.
But this...
This far more important action.
Well, that is a two-day turnaround, and probably not even that.
You want to fix the American health care system?
Whoa, that's going to be an uphill battle.
That's going to take you months or years.
Ooh, do you feel like perhaps putting a bit of a kibosh...
On allowing people to come to your country from other countries that can't possibly be vetted.
These people can't possibly be vetted.
Well, that's going to take forever.
I mean, that's got to go through so many hoops and there's so many objections.
Oh, do you want to launch over 50 missiles into another country?
Oh yeah, we can get that done.
12, 24, 36 hours tops.
Boom!
Boom!
And that's how the system works.
If you want to change it for the better, you're trying to climb a glacial vertical ice sheet with your teeth.
Oh, you want to rain death on other countries?
We can get that done for you right away.
It's a slippery slope up to virtue, and it sure seems to be a pretty slippery and greased slope down to hell.
Not going through Congress.
It's kind of a constitutional requirement for military action and not really doing that.
Which takes away the pretense of, you know, the Republic just a little bit.
War, military action, big, complicated, messy business, massive amounts of unintended consequences and escalations and the fog of war, and who knows what's happening, and facts are hard to come by, and everyone's got an agenda, and manipulation is so easy.
And America could be considered this big, giant, dumb bully that endless ER goes around the world to whisper treason and perdition into the ear of the bully so that he goes around whacking their enemies.
Not going through Congress.
Not a good idea.
And it's funny how the left complained a lot about Trump being some kind of dictator.
But he initiates military action without going through Congress.
I don't seem to have much of a problem with it.
I don't seem to be bothered by that much at all.
You know who can deal with Syria?
Lots of countries around have a vested interest.
Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, remnants of Libya, hell, maybe even Israel.
Got a vested interest?
Feel free to pony up yourselves, everybody.
It's your neighborhood, after all, not America's.
This is the strangeness of politics.
I don't know what pressures are brought to bear.
I don't know what's happening.
But I do know this.
Well, President Trump wanted to deal with ISIS. Hey, you know who was fighting ISIS? Assad was fighting ISIS. Guess what?
He just bombed Assad, which is why ISIS is giving you a slow clap in between wielding their scimitars.
Is Assad a perfect guy?
Of course not.
Of course not.
But I thought the whole point was to defeat ISIS. Maybe you have to work with Assad to do that.
I don't know.
Is he worse than Joseph Stalin, who killed tens of millions of people?
Is Assad worse than Joseph Stalin?
No.
But I thought that ISIS was the big enemy.
Churchill was able to get along with Stalin in order to defeat Hitler.
As Churchill said, Stalin's a bad guy, and Churchill said, well, if Hitler were to invade hell itself, I'm sure I could find something nice to say about the devil.
Do you want to defeat ISIS or not?
If you want to defeat ISIS, bombing Assad is not the way to go.
Maybe you're giving up on that.
Maybe now it's regime change.
I don't know.
And who the hell are you going to replace Assad with to run all of this?
Who?
Who?
There's no way to know.
No way to govern.
This place with intractable, centuries-old religious conflicts.
Just go look up the average IQ in Syria.
See how much fun that's going to be to govern.
Two-thirds of the migrants from Syria that come to Europe are illiterate in their own language.
Sure, it's gonna be just like Germany and Japan after the Second World War.
That's exactly what you're working with, right?
So I don't know.
I am not happy.
I think it's a huge mistake.
I think it alienates the base.
I think it appeases and therefore only encourages the military-industrial complex.
I think it's not thought through.
I think it's an emotional reaction to seeing vivid mainstream media generated and propagated images of suffering women and children thrust in your face and having the power to believe that you can wave some magic fiery sky wand and make all theills and evils and entrenched immoralities of the world better in a cleansing gout of fire and flame That's not how things work.
That movie we've seen before.
We know how it ends.
We're going to go in.
We're going to be welcomed as liberators.
We're going to get rid of the despot and conduct and create a perfect Jeffersonian democracy out of the destroyed ashes of a Middle Eastern country.
Yeah.
This has been tried decade after decade after decade after decade after decade.
And you know what?
Everything just gets worse.
Middle Eastern peace, democracy, and stability is just another government program.
You know, like the war on drugs that got rid of all the drugs.
Like the war on poverty that has eliminated poverty.
Like the war on ignorance and illiteracy that has produced all of the wonderful scholars that come out of government schools.
Peace in the Middle East.
Stability in the Middle East.
Just another government program.
A little bit more obvious how that is achieved.
The missiles are a little clearer than the bureaucracy and the regulations and taxation.
It's a little more clear how the government achieves its aims.
But this is like stomping in a vat of acid.
You're not going to bring peace to the Middle East people.
