His Buddy Lindsey Graham on TV today saying Trump needs to take out Assad air force BLAH BLAH BLAH
RADDATZ: … horrific images this morning. The president just tweeting: “Many dead, including women and children, in mindless chemical attack in Syria. President Putin, Russia, and Iran are responsible for backing animal Assad. Big price to pay.” What do you think he means by that? Tom Bossert told me nothing is off the table.
GRAHAM: Well, it’s a defining moment in his presidency, because he has challenged Assad in the past not to use chemical weapons. We had a one-and-done missile attack. So Assad is at it again. They see us, our resolve, breaking. They see our determination to stay in Syria waning. And it’s no accident they used chemical weapons.
But President Trump can reset the table here. To me, I would destroy Assad’s air force. I would create safe zones in Syria where people can come back to their country from the surrounding area and live a better life. Train up Syrians to take on Assad so we can negotiate in Geneva from a position of strength.
If it becomes a tweet without meaning, then he has hurt himself in North Korea. If he doesn’t follow through and live up to that tweet, he’s going to look weak in the eyes of Russia and Iran. So this is a defining moment, Mr. President. You need to follow through with that tweet. Show a resolve that Obama never did to get this right.
RADDATZ: And, Senator Graham, this week also you heard President Trump saying he wanted to pull our troops...
GRAHAM: Yes.
RADDATZ: … out of Syria. They clarified that somewhat. What do you think about doing that? I know it’s a different fight. It’s against ISIS.
GRAHAM: Complete utter disaster to leave before the fight is done. Have we learned nothing when what happens when you leave too soon? We pulled our troops out of Iraq. ISIS came back. But President Trump made a speech in Riyadh, Martha, that was very important. He went to their world and said two things: I stand with you against Iran; and I stand with you to defeat radical Islam.
If we leave Syria by the mere passage of time, we undercut that policy. ISIS will come back. You will be giving Damascus to the Iranians. They’ll have a land bridge from Tehran to Beirut. Syria will be occupied by Hezbollah, Russia, Iran, a nightmare for our friends in Israel. You’ve got to stick with it. You need a holding force as part of a regional force.
If Americans are not part of a holding force, ISIS will come back. And there is no strategy by the Trump administration to counter Iranian expansion. And you need a strategy to deal with Iran just as much as ISIS. And the test of that strategy is in Syria.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/mccain-blames-america-first/
The warmongering Arizona senator always denies U.S. responsibility for our government’s own crimes and blunders, and like many other hawks he derides most criticisms of U.S. foreign policy as “blaming America first.” But here McCain does something far more ridiculous by effectively blaming the U.S. government for the crimes of states that it opposes because of its supposed “inaction.” As far as McCain et al. are concerned, U.S. actions are never responsible for provoking negative reactions or causing blowback, but U.S. inaction can be blamed for whatever terrible things a foreign government happens to do in its own territory. McCain’s understanding of culpability is completely upside down: he always lets the U.S. off the hook for its worst behavior while imputing the worst behavior of our enemies to our government’s “failure” to “stop” it. The U.S. is never called to account for what it does abroad, but McCain is the first to vilify the government when it “fails” to start or join the war McCain supports. This sort of thinking was pernicious and wrong when it was used against the previous president, and it is just as pernicious and wrong today. It is one of the many reasons why our foreign policy debates are so warped and biased in favor of destructive action.