Maybe. Bill O’Reilly’s sexual misconduct may not shock Trump, but somebody using sarin nerve gas against kids sure does.
“I now have responsibility,” Trump said Wednesday at a news conference with King Abdullah II of Jordan in the Rose Garden at the White House. “It crossed a lot of lines for me. When you kill innocent children, innocent babies — babies, little babies — with a chemical gas that is so lethal … that crosses many, many lines, beyond a red line.”
“It’s very, very possible that my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much,” Trump said.
What does that mean? Who knows.
We’re about to find out once and for all if he’s really an agent of Russia or a Republican, I guess, depending on what he does. Meaning that he’s either going to ignore what Assad does, which Putin wants, or he will make an emotional decision to start bombing just to show up Obama one more time and make his worst critics in the Senate (McCain and Rubio) happy.
I have two thoughts on this. The first is that this situation is not only why I would never want to be the President of the United States nor do I understand why anyone else would want to either. Regardless of what Trump does or doesn’t do, kids are going to die. Either we’ll kill them accidentally or Assad will kill them because he feels like it.
I’m pretty sure every single president since FDR, minimum, has had to send guys to kill other people or die trying. I don’t understand how they cope with it, really. Is there a Presidential Grief Counselor? If so, that should be the highest paid federal employee. Anyway, I wouldn’t be able to handle it.
The reason I say that is that I fully understand Trump’s outrage and urge to “do something”. He is under a tremendous amount of pressure to act in Syria, both because of his feeling of “responsibility” and the incessant needling by that warmongering asshole John McCain.
My other thought is that one of the top five reasons I voted for Trump was that I thought he was less War Crazed of the two major candidates. You can argue with me all you like, but Clinton was creaming her pantsuit in anticipation of dragging us into more international conflicts. Trump convinced me that he wasn’t interested in any further needless military interventions and I’d prefer not to be proven wrong.
I’ve seen the images coming out of Syria. Yeah, it’s awful.
But it isn’t our war.
It isn’t our fault either. There’s nothing we stand to gain from it. It isn’t even within our ability to resolve. I’m not indifferent to human suffering, but I don’t support any war that doesn’t further the best interests of the United States. There’s no way I support Trump if he moves forward with military action against the Assad regime.
With that, I leave you with this to ponder.
UPDATE: Oh. He did the “I’m going to show Obama up” one.
Fuck.
My guess was that Trump’s hardcore supporters would be opposed to this, that it might be what finally gets them to turn against him.
You know what? I’m not so sure it will. I predict that we’ll see them cheerfully claiming that this proves he’s a more decisive leader than that wuss Obama. Also, he’s clearly not a Russian stooge. Anyone want to take bets on how we’ll see this spun in the morning?
This move benefits nobody but ISIS and al Qaeda, even if it is just a limited retaliatory strike.
Call me disgusted. This isn’t what I voted for.
