Syria Strike Fails To Follow Progressive Playbook, Leading To Unhinged Op-Eds

While the attached headline for this Washington Post opinion piece by uber-leftist Katrina Vanden Huevel is technically linked to the piece, it might have been better to call it “Trump Did Something Good, And That’s Not Something Progressives Should Agree With!!!!!”

Syria strike follows Washington’s failed foreign-policy playbook

“There’s a playbook in Washington that presidents are supposed to follow,” then-President Obama said last year, defending his decision not to unilaterally strike Syria in 2013. “It’s a playbook that comes out of the foreign-policy establishment. And the playbook prescribes responses to different events, and these responses tend to be militarized responses. Where America is directly threatened, the playbook works. But the playbook can also be a trap that can lead to bad decisions.”

Obviously, Katrina cannot place blame at Obama’s feet for 6 years of inaction, dithering, leading from behind, and general fecklessness. Nope. Trump

Last week, by impulsively ordering a military strike against a Syrian air base, President Trump both followed the playbook and fell into the trap. To be clear, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s apparent use of chemical weapons against civilians in the town of Khan Sheikhoun is a heinous crime. Almost six years of civil war in Syria have led to nearly half a million dead and millions more displaced, a humanitarian crisis worsened by the Trump administration’s cruel and senseless attempts to ban Syrian refugees. The human suffering has been horrific to watch. Yet despite the fervor of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment, which fetishizes the purported “credibility” that accompanies the use of force, it remains folly to think that Trump’s military action will help end the carnage.

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