Old_Trapper70
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- Joined
- Dec 17, 2014
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https://www.newyorker.com/news/news...ion-accomplished-boast-about-his-syria-strike
"Technically, that’s true. The limited military operation—far smaller than the advance hype suggested—did degrade Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s ability to use weaponized toxins against civilians. But it did not eliminate Syria’s entire stock, the Pentagon acknowledged, in a press briefing on Saturday. “The program is larger than what we struck,” Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie told reporters. “We could have gone to other places and done other things.” The six-day run-up to the strike may also have allowed sufficient time for Syria to relocate equipment and personnel, the Pentagon said.
More fundamentally, however, Trump’s strike was a tactical response that lacks a long-term strategy to help restore stability to turbulent Syria. A country that is the geostrategic center of the Middle East, Syria has been ravaged by seven years of a war that has killed an estimated half million people and displaced more than half of its twenty-three million citizens. The U.S.-led military operation did nothing to change those realities—or even challenge Assad’s brutal rule or his growing military grip on the country.
“So you strike. Then what?” Ryan Crocker, a former Ambassador to Syria (as well as Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Kuwait), told me. “If the rockets hit the targets they intended, you could say the mission was accomplished in a narrow sense. But, in reality, it accomplished nothing. It might have been better if we’d not struck at all. It’s sending a message that killing is O.K. any way but one way—with chemical weapons. How many have been killed in Eastern Ghouta during this whole Syrian campaign? Far more by non-chemical means. It’s obscene.”
"Technically, that’s true. The limited military operation—far smaller than the advance hype suggested—did degrade Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s ability to use weaponized toxins against civilians. But it did not eliminate Syria’s entire stock, the Pentagon acknowledged, in a press briefing on Saturday. “The program is larger than what we struck,” Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie told reporters. “We could have gone to other places and done other things.” The six-day run-up to the strike may also have allowed sufficient time for Syria to relocate equipment and personnel, the Pentagon said.
More fundamentally, however, Trump’s strike was a tactical response that lacks a long-term strategy to help restore stability to turbulent Syria. A country that is the geostrategic center of the Middle East, Syria has been ravaged by seven years of a war that has killed an estimated half million people and displaced more than half of its twenty-three million citizens. The U.S.-led military operation did nothing to change those realities—or even challenge Assad’s brutal rule or his growing military grip on the country.
“So you strike. Then what?” Ryan Crocker, a former Ambassador to Syria (as well as Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Kuwait), told me. “If the rockets hit the targets they intended, you could say the mission was accomplished in a narrow sense. But, in reality, it accomplished nothing. It might have been better if we’d not struck at all. It’s sending a message that killing is O.K. any way but one way—with chemical weapons. How many have been killed in Eastern Ghouta during this whole Syrian campaign? Far more by non-chemical means. It’s obscene.”
