Trump’s view of Syria: How it evolved, in 19 tweets. There are two possible explanations for Trump’s airstrikes in Syria — neither of them good. Seven lessons from Trump’s Syria strike: The attack raises a series of questions about the president’s approach to America’s political processes and institutions. Does Trump need congressional approval to strike Syria? The debate, explained. The generals have won their war with Trump: The missile attack on Syria shows how the president has caved to the Pentagon — with deadly consequences for U.S. foreign policy. Anne Barnard on the grim logic behind Syria’s chemical weapons attack. Why firing Tomahawk missiles at Syria was a nearly useless response.
President Not-Obama: Is this the week Donald Trump found a foreign policy? A president who simultaneously reveres military force while despising the “globalist” ideologies that have both justified and restrained its use so often in U.S. history: Ed Kilgore on Trump’s Jacksonian attack on Syria. Trump’s foreign policy is dangerously impulsive: Trump needs a foreign policy, not just reactions to what he sees on cable news. The Trump administration seems to have no coherent understanding of its Syria policy. Trump’s vision on Syria’s foreign policy is still completely incoherent. Andrew Sullivan on the Trump Doctrine: Unpredictability and incoherence. Peter Baker on the emerging Trump Doctrine: Don’t follow doctrine.
Does Trump know what to do after striking Syria? Trump’s confusing strike on Syria: If President Trump broadens his aims against Assad, he will enter the very morass that Candidate Trump warned against. Trump might be going to war — but he has no plans for establishing peace. The U.S. attack on Syria threatens to drag the world into conflict, analysts warn. What could go wrong for the U.S. in Syria? War with Russia.
Trump had his first big foreign policy challenge — so what did we learn? Sorry, missile strikes don’t make Trump a serious man. Nothing engorges the cable news id quite like a war waged by the United States, even when the war is only a one-off retaliatory Tomahawk strike. The media loved Trump’s show of military might — are we really doing this again? Dan Rather hits journalists who called Trump “presidential” after Syria missile strike. Note to pundits: please stop training our president to kill. Trump badly wants pundits’ approval, TV loves his Syria strike — so what comes next?
Trump’s most die-hard media defenders turn on him after strikes on Syria. Alt-Right turns on “neo-con puppet” Trump after bombing Syria. It makes sense for the alt-Right to start abandoning Trump.
From n+1, Patrick Blanchfield on what we do best: War has become a given in American political life — in the process it has become depoliticized; and the response required at this late, desperate stage is neither anti-Assad nor anti-ISIS nor even anti-imperialist — it is antiwar.
