Trump’s Syria Strike

Note: Text in Italics is my own -Amanda

Well, something needed to be done in Syria and I’m not sure what our other options were, aside from the airstrikes. That being said I can’t say I believe that Trump acted as a humanitarian because he saw the children of the gas attacks. I’d like to believe that reason, but based on two years of seeing his anti-refugee and anti-muslim rhetoric I am skeptical. But I am glad something at least was finally done over there. I have always been critical of Obama’s inaction in regards to Syria. And Hillary would have done the same thing Trump did, in fact she recently said so.

Hillary Clinton calls for U.S. to bomb Syrian air fields – via Reuters 

“In her first interview since her stunning presidential election defeat by Republican rival Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton on Thursday called for the United States to bomb Syrian air fields. Clinton, in an interview at the Women in the World Summit in New York, also called Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election a theft more damaging than Watergate.

Asked whether she now believes that failing to take a tougher stand against Syria was her worst foreign policy mistake as secretary of state under President Barack Obama, Clinton said she favored more aggressive action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. “I think we should have been more willing to confront Assad,” Clinton said in the interview, conducted by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. “I really believe we should have and still should take out his air fields and prevent him from being able to use them to bomb innocent people and drop sarin gas on them.”

Meanwhile, every time Trump does something that is NOT absurd. He’s heaped with praise. I mean, just look at this piece in the New York Times. He’s praised, despite the fact that the column completely ignores his stance on refugees. And the best way the US could help Syrians is to open up our borders. Expanding refugee resettlement  would carry little in the way of short-term financial costs, and would likely provide a powerful boost to the US economy and drastically increase the living standards of Syrians who were able to relocate. Instead, Trump has sought to slash the number of Syrians allowed to come to the US — while dropping bombs on Syria itself. 

“If we’re actually serious about helping Syrian people — both people who’ve stayed and refugees — it’s not enough to identify an intervention that seems like it could make things better and then declare that it’s the only viable solution. You have to compare it with alternative plans, and see which produces the most good at the least cost. And it’s very, very hard to argue that any military intervention that could avert further bloodshed in Syria — or even have prevented the bloodshed of the last four years — would have done more good, at lower cost, than this: simply issuing green cards to every Syrian who wants one — or even issuing them to just 1 million, or 500,000 — and providing airlifts to bring people here.” (via Dylan Matthews at VOX)