Trump Enforces Obama’s Red Line
America Now took a break from Action Movie Quote Friday, as there was plenty of action to be covered in the real world, beginning with Trump’s first major military/foreign policy action, the launching of Tomahawk missiles to destroy an air base in Syria.
The missiles targeted what intel had identified as the air base from which the chemical weapons used in Idlib had been launched earlier in the week, leading to ghastly deaths that made headlines.
“Damage assessments here range from a few Russian aircraft to something more than that,” Buck summarized.
Turning to the narratives that have already begun popping up, Buck mentioned that Donald Trump had run on a campaign paying lip service to the doctrine of non-interventionism, and contemplated where this decision fit in that thinking.
“I don’t think this is a foreign policy shift for the president,” Buck said. “I think this is Trump enforcing President Obama’s red line for him.”
“It’s not a major strategic strike. It’s a message being sent: that chemical weapons as a method of mass murder on the battlefield are unacceptable.”
“It could degrade and help the overthrow of the Assad regime,” Buck summarized. “But we are at the very early stages of this. This is just a start.”
Buck did warn listeners that the same people in the Obama administration who promised Syria’s chemical weapons were turned in were the people who promised Iran would never get a nuclear weapon.
Syria’s Knife’s Edge
Buck then fielded a call from Sean Parnell, founder of the American Warrior Initiative and former Army Ranger in Afghanistan, to get something aside from his “CIA analyst way of looking at this.”
“I applaud Donald Trump for his response,” said Parnell. “It was swift, decisive and bold. War is hell enough as it is without chemical weapons. When you have a brutal dictator gassing children, they need to be brought to justice, and the United States has the power and the compassion to do it.”
Buck asked if Sean supported the deployment of special ops troops or other kinds of ground force intervention.
“I don’t know who the good guy is and the bad guy is on the ground right now,” Sean said. “At this point because Syria is such a quagmire, the solution has to be far less kinetic. I’d rather see the Trump administration…force a mandatory ceasefire and get all those civilians out of there, and let ISIS and Assad beat hell out of each other.”
“Syria is balanced so periliously on a knife’s edge. We’ve been down that road before, and it hasn’t worked out well for us.”
Eat Your Peas
Buck then stretched out, mellowed out, and basked in the victory of the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch, which passed on a 54-45 vote.
“This is in the plus column in the Trump-over-Hillary decision. I had friends telling me they would take Hillary over Trump, and the judicial nomination process and having a conservative on the Court was the compelling reason to just eat your peas and pull the lever for Trump.”
Buck covered the fact that the nuclear option was used to confirm Gorsuch.
“Do any of you doubt for a second that the Democrats would have done the same thing? Hypocrisy doesn’t bother the Democrats. The rules don’t matter. Winning power does.”
“No serious person could say Gorsuch isn’t qualified,” Buck said. “You couldn’t even say what the opposition’s arguments was. It’s all nonsense, it really is.”
A Proxy War?
Buck then brought on Adam Kredo, writer for the Washington Free Beacon, to talk about some of the late-breaking news coming in from the Tomahawk missile strike.
“The Iranians and Russians condemned it as a ‘dangerous move,'” said Kredo. “The Iranians are working towards more of a conspiracy theory are claiming the US was behind the chemical attack in the first place, as is their wont.”
Both men agreed if the attack was to have any impact, it would have to be the beginning of an entirely new and more serious approach to foreign policy, while sharing the concern that there may be a retaliation from Iran for this attack.
“At best we’re working around Iranian forces and agents in Iraq, and if they wanted to carry out a strike that affected us over there, there’s certainly room for meddling,” Kredo said. “The Iranians work with Russia closely, and there’s an opportunity for a proxy war.”
Holy War Comes to Sweden
Finally, Buck covered the serious and somber attacks in Stockholm, during which a hijacked truck drove through a shopping area, killing at least four and many more wounded. Terrorism is “suspected.”
“When it’s 99% sure that it’s terrorism, I wish they would stop with the hedging,” Buck opined. “It’s meant to take away from the impact on the public. This is not the narrative the New York Times and other liberal want to be a part of, the narrative of a holy war going on.”
“There’s something especially disgraceful about being in a country that has either taken you or your parents in as an act of kindness, and you turn around and kill innocent people because of your ideology, which is clearly what happened here.”
“Every time there’s a terrorist attack, MSNBC and CNN will bring on experts who aren’t experts in anything who will say it has nothing to do with Islam, and who will call anybody who does speak the truth an Islamophobe. ‘The real fear is Islamophobia’ they’ll say. Oh, really?”