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WV,
This Jacobin article doesn’t answer your question, but it’s a pretty good summary of the madness of our current politics.
Centrists and op-ed columnists, take heart. At a time of seemingly unprecedented gridlock and partisan rancor in Washington, there’s still something that can bring America’s divided political class together: a good old-fashioned war.
Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to reverse course and bomb an airbase to avenge the Syrian people who he is also desperately trying to keep out of the country may have come as a shock to those who believed his inconsistent promises on the campaign trail to keep the United States out of foreign wars. For most others, though, launching a bombing campaign like this one was only a matter of time.
But unlike the Trump administration’s half-baked attempt to yank health insurance from millions of people, its utter failures in instituting a racist immigration program, or its ongoing efforts to round up and break apart millions of families, Trump’s bombing of Syria likely won’t be met with a wall of “resistance,” certainly not within the halls of power. That’s because for nearly all liberal and conservative pundits and politicians, foreign wars — particularly those launched in the name of “humanitarianism” — are an issue where no leader, even one as disliked as Trump, can ever go wrong.
There were the usual suspects. Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who have never met a war they didn’t want to send others to fight, praised Trump for acting at a “pivotal moment in Syria,” “unlike the previous administration,” despite their often-lauded history of rhetorically standing up to Trump. (“He’s been his usual, incredibly politically brave self,” one Democratic senator said of Graham as they investigated Trump’s Russia ties).
At least those two are consistent warmongers. But much of the Republican support for Trump’s bombing has come from his former political enemies who once spent their hours grandstanding about his lack of fitness for office — and even opposed Obama’s proposed airstrikes on Syria four years ago, though not out of any concern for the suffering such airstrikes would produce.
Marco Rubio, who refused to lend his support to Obama’s plan because it was “basically a symbolic strike to send a message, but not backed up by a clear plan,” yesterday told his Twitter followers that “#Somethingshouldhappen,” that Trump was “deeply moved by the images & stories emerging from #SyriaChemicalAttack,” and ended up quoting the Bible to cheer on Trump “acting decisively.”
Meanwhile, Paul Ryan — who in 2013 declared that Obama “needs to clearly demonstrate that the use of military force would strengthen America’s security” — called Trump’s action “appropriate and just.” Ted Cruz wrote an entire op-ed in the Washington Post that same year explaining why he wasn’t backing Obama’s plans for a “limited airstrike,” citing the fact that Assad’s use of chemical weapons didn’t threaten US national security and that “the potential for escalation is immense.” On Thursday, as tomahawks rained down on Syria, he issued a milquetoast statement that simply stated he looked forward to hearing Trump make the case for how to keep chemical weapons out of terrorists’ hands.
Republican lawmakers’ partisan hypocrisy and lust for war is hardly surprising. But Trump’s strike was also enabled by significant liberal and Democratic support, before, during, and after the strike.
MSNBC spent the days leading up to the airstrike goading Trump into taking some kind of action.
“Men, women, children, and babies got gassed in Syria this week because last week the Trump administration gave the signal that, that was OK with President Trump,” Lawrence O’Donnell said on Wednesday, referring to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s equivocation over whether Assad should stay or go. “Everything Donald Trump has ever said about President Assad has been a signal for Assad to go on killing as many people as he felt like,” he later added.
O’Donnell then brought on neoconservative Max Boot, one of the few men whose full name doubles as his foreign policy, to further beat the drums. “This is not the first time the kids have been killed,” Boot said. “Donald Trump has always been OK with this in the past, but now they’ve crossed some kind of line. Well, OK, so what are you going to do about it?”
Boot, who has urged the United States “unambiguously to embrace its imperial role” and is completely unrepentant about his longtime support for the Iraq War, has been calling for US involvement in Syria since Bush was in power.
The night before, former Fox anchor Greta van Susteren interviewed Democratic senator Ben Cardin, who had voted in 2013 to authorize Obama to strike Syria. Van Susteren tried to coax support for unilateral action out of Cardin (“Are you saying that we should do something alone in Syria? What are you saying we’re going to do? We’re not going to get help out of the UN”), but when it wasn’t forthcoming, she turned to Illinois Republican Adam Kinzinger, who affirmed that “there needs to be punishing strikes against the Syrian regime as a result of this.” Kinzinger returned the next morning on the network, repeating his call for “punishing airstrikes.”
MSNBC also had on Rhode Island Democrat David Cicilline (who had earlier charged that it was “shameful that the White House is no longer seeking to remove Bashir al-Assad from power”), who pushed for some kind of unnamed action to get Assad out of power. That same day, Democratic operative and Clinton ally Peter Daou tweeted: “I oppose @realDonaldTrump’s policies, but I wilfully support appropriate retaliation against #Assad’s war crimes in #Syria.” Daou believes Trump is a “dangerous bigot” and “a danger to the free world,” but he sees no problem with supporting such a man’s use of US military might.
Things continued to heat up the day of Trump’s decision. Van Susteren interviewed retired general Barry McCaffrey, who suggested the Trump administration “give the US Air Force and Navy fifteen days and tell them to take out the Syrian Air Force.” When she suggested such action could also take out Russian military, possibly escalating the conflict, McCaffrey assured her that “Russia is a second- or third-tier military power.”
Meanwhile, just hours before the man she had dubbed “Dangerous Donald” ordered planes to start bombing Syria, former Democratic standard-bearer Hillary Clinton told a friendly audience that his actions were exactly the approach the United States should take.
“I really believe we should have and still should take out his airfields and prevent him from being able to use them to bomb innocent people and drop sarin gas on them,” she said to a steadily building crescendo of applause. (Yet somehow, liberal journalists used the occasion to declare that Clinton never would have done such a thing.)
Thus far, Trump appears to have been richly rewarded by the press for his “decisive” actions, with even his sworn enemies praising his decision to go into Syria with no apparent plan or goal other than “sending a message.”
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who otherwise spends his days brainstorming possible ways to kick Trump out of office, stated last night that “Trump is right to make Syria pay a price for war crimes” and that “taking out airfields is the best approach.” Perhaps not coincidentally, Kristof had been earlier interviewing Clinton when she made the same suggestion.
MSNBC had on a number of guests who gushed about the attack. Marco Rubio expounded on the strategic importance of the airstrikes. Nicholas Kristof reiterated that Trump had done the right thing, citing the fact that Clinton had “prescribed pretty much exactly the same response.” Democratic representative Jim Hines then affirmed that Kristof was correct and that “there is definitely virtue in making sure that Assad understands that if he steps over that line . . . there is a price to be paid.”
Entirely missing from the broadcast was any semblance of a war-skeptical voice, pointing out, as Micah Zenko has, that US limited airstrikes have a poor track record of actually achieving anything, or explaining that most long-term military adventures usually start off as a form of “limited” involvement — from Vietnam, to Libya, to Syria itself.
A number of top Democrats took a break from resisting Trump to also pat him on the back for his decision. Senate Democratic whip Dick Durbin called it a “measured response” (only in Washington could firing fifty-nine missiles into a country be considered “measured”). The previously restrained Ben Cardin called it a “clear signal that the United States will stand up for internationally accepted norms and rules against the use of chemical weapons.” Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi both backed the move, with Schumer calling it “the right thing to do,” and Pelosi terming it a “proportional response.”
Trump must have known his decision would get such a friendly reception. After all, it was only a little over a month ago that he received torrents of praise from pundits, liberal and conservative, for paying tribute to a fallen Navy SEAL whom he had sent to die in a chaotic and poorly planned raid that killed thirty civilians. Now, even his sworn enemies were falling over themselves to praise what could be the start of regime change in Syria.
The pattern seems clear: when people die, Trump gets plaudits.
The spectacle of liberals cheerleading and, subsequently, congratulating Trump for taking a short-sighted military action in Syria shouldn’t be surprising. But it is an essential element in legitimizing and enabling such military misadventures, applying a bipartisan coating to questionable military operations that allows presidents to launch them without fear of deeper scrutiny.
As long as liberals continue doing their work for them, right-wing hawks barely have to lift a finger.
Well, this is hopeful. Just checked the Washington Post and at least one writer gets it:
The media loved Trump’s show of military might. Are we really doing this again?
By Margaret Sullivan Media Columnist April 8 at 6:00 AM
The cruise missiles struck, and many in the mainstream media fawned.
“I think Donald Trump became president of the United States last night,” declared Fareed Zakaria on CNN, after firing of 59 missiles at a Syrian military airfield late Thursday night. (His words sounded familiar, since CNN’s Van Jones made a nearly identical pronouncement after Trump’s first address to Congress.)
“On Syria attack, Trump’s heart came first,” read a New York Times headline.
“President Trump has done the right thing and I salute him for it,” wrote the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens — a frequent Trump critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning conservative columnist. He added: “Now destroy the Assad regime for good.”Brian Williams, on MSNBC, seemed mesmerized by the images of the strikes provided by the Pentagon. He used the word “beautiful” three times and alluded to a Leonard Cohen lyric — “I am guided by the beauty of our weapons” — without apparent irony.
Quite the pivot, for some. Assessing Trump’s presidency a few weeks ago, Zakaria wrote that while the Romans recommended keeping people happy with bread and circuses, “so far, all we have gotten is the circus.” And the Times has been been so tough on Trump that the president rarely refers to the paper without “failing” or “fake” as a descriptor.
Trump comments on Syria, Xi visit
Play Video1:15
President Trump said aboard Air Force One on April 6 that “something should happen” with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in light of the chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun. Trump did not offer specifics. (The Washington Post)But after the strikes, praise flowed like wedding champagne — especially on cable news.
“Guest after guest is gushing. From MSNBC to CNN, Trump is receiving his best night of press so far,” wrote Sam Sacks, a Washington podcaster and journalist. “And all he had to do was start a war.”
Why do so many in the news media love a show of force?
“There is no faster way to bring public support than to pursue military action,” said Ken Paulson, head of the Newseum Institute’s First Amendment Center.
“It’s a pattern not only in American history, but in world history. We rally around the commander-in-chief — and that’s understandable.”
Paulson noted that the news media also “seem to get bored with their own narrative” about Trump’s failings, and they welcome a chance to switch it up.
But that’s not good enough, he said: “The watchdog has to have clear vision and not just a sporadic bark.”
Clara Jeffery, editor in chief of Mother Jones, offered a simple explanation: “It’s dramatic. It’s good for TV, reporters get caught up in the moment, or, worse, jingoism.”
She added: “Military action is viewed as inherently nonpartisan, opposition or skepticism as partisan. News organizations that are fearful of looking partisan can fall into the trap of failing to provide context.”
And so, empathy as the president’s clear motivation is accepted, she said — “with no mention of the refugee ban keeping those kids out, no mention of Islamophobia that has informed his campaign and administration. How can you write about motive and not explore that hypocrisy?”
Mocking “the instant elevation of Trump into a serious and respected war leader,” Glenn Greenwald in the Intercept recalled John Jay, one of the Federalist Papers authors, who wrote more than 200 years ago: “However disgraceful it may be to human nature . . . nations in general will make war whenever they have a prospect of getting anything by it.”
In fact, Jay wrote, “absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it” — except, of course, to scratch that eternal itch for military glory, revenge or self-aggrandizement.
Groupthink, and a lack of proper skepticism, is something that we’ve seen many times before as the American news media watches an administration step to the brink of war.
Most notoriously, perhaps, that was true in the run-up to the Iraq invasion in 2003, the start of a long disaster there.
Stephen Walt, Harvard professor of international affairs, thinks the press and the public should have learned some things by now.
“Syria remains a tragedy because there are no good options,” he wrote in Foreign Policy, and America’s interventions in the Middle East very seldom end well.
Walt later told me that the news media now must look forward and ask deeper questions.
“What is Trump’s overall strategy for Syria,” given that “the balance of power on the ground is unchanged and we are no closer to a political settlement.”
Missile strikes may seem thrilling, and retaliation righteous.
But journalists and commentators ought to remember the duller virtues, too, like skepticism, depth and context.
And keep their eyes fixed firmly there, not on the spectacular images in the sky.
For more by Margaret Sullivan visit wapo.st/sullivan
