Why Trump's U-turn on Syria is no victory for ISIS
United States President Donald Trump, a former reality TV star, likes theatrical flourishes.
By attacking the Syrian al-Shayrat airbase with 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles following a horrific chemical attack that killed more than 80 men, women and children in the rebel-occupied town of Khan Sheikhoun, Trump has achieved the impossible: grudging praise from the Washington establishment that since he took office on January 20, 2017, has tried to discredit, demean and delegitimise his presidency.
No one yet knows for sure who launched the chemical attack. Those who have been trying to overthrow Syrian president Bashar al-Assad since 2011 claimed within hours of the attack that it was the handiwork of the Syrian army.
Regime change in Syria has been the stated policy of the Western establishment: the US, Britain, France and the rest of NATO. Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which despise Assad, are fully on board. So are the Gulf states, some of whom were the early financiers of the Islamic State (ISIS).
Till last week, Trump had dismissed criticism of Assad. He was a "bad hombre" but the West's real fight was with ISIS.
Syria was fighting ISIS. Russia was fighting ISIS. Iran was fighting ISIS. Trump's policy put the US firmly on the side of Syria, Russia and Iran despite deep differences with Damascus, Moscow and Tehran.
The Washington establishment is packed with regime-change hawks. It wants Assad out at any cost even if it means weakening the fight against ISIS. Trump opposed this strategy, drawing the fury of Washington's elite. The media and Democratic politicians have since Trump's election sought to change his views on Assad. They had failed - till last Thursday night.
So what changed Trump's mind? And what does it bode for the fight to defeat ISIS in Syria?
Trump said it was the heart-rending photos of "beautiful babies" dying after the chemical attack. The visuals sickened the world.
Trump being Trump, however, also saw an opportunity. He seized it.
Ever since he became president, Washington's political, military and media elite has eviscerated him for being soft on Vladimir Putin's Russia which it claimed "interfered" with the US presidential election.
House Intelligence and Ethics Committees are probing the interference for which no evidence has so far emerged.
However, the relentless campaign by the establishment media led by The New York Times and The Washington Post has forced House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes to recuse himself. Nunes has discovered evidence of Obama-era intelligence surveillance of Trump's transition team by Susan Rice, President Obama's National Security Advisor (NSA). The surveillance, if proved, could lead to criminal charges against Rice and tarnish Obama's presidency.
So while Russian collusion in Trump's election remains unproved, there is mounting evidence of Obama officials' surveillance of Trump's campaign team designed to help the Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
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| Trump has achieved the impossible: grudging praise from the Washington establishment for attacking the al-Shayrat airbase. Photo: Reuters |
Meanwhile, under-fire Trump has suffered two defeats. The courts twice stopped his travel ban from Muslim countries. His bid to repeal Obamacare - a key Trump campaign promise - was defeated by ideological infighting within his own party.
The confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch is an isolated Trump triumph. With his popularity ratings lower than that of any US president this early in his term, Trump needed a "home run" win. Syria gave him one.
In hours, the establishment media hailed his "decisive and forceful" action. More crucially, the charge of Trump being cosy with Putin and Russia crumbled. Syria is Russia's client state. Moscow's only Middle East base is in Syria. Putin, on cue, ordered an immediate end to coordination with US forces in Syria following the US missile strike.
Trump has promised further action against Syria if Moscow doesn't "contain" Assad. So is regime change in Syria back on the table? The West and its embedded media would like to think so. They would like the US to do in Assad's Syria what it did in Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 2003 and in Muammar Gaddafi's Libya in 2011.
In both vacuums, the Islamic State and al-Qaeda stepped in. It has taken several years and several thousand lives to drive Islamists out of the areas they occupied in Syria, Iraq and Libya, beheading men, raping women and killing children. The barbaric assault on the Yazidis and their children by ISIS remains a haunting reminder of the real enemy the world faces in the Middle East: Islamists.
Assad is a brutal dictator. He may or may not have been responsible for last week's chemical attack: no hard evidence has yet been proferred. But it is up to the Syrian people, not the West and its embedded media, to judge him and overthrow him.
His replacements, whom the West has for six years armed and funded, are brutal Islamists like those who ran amok in Iraq and Libya once Saddam and Gaddafi had been killed by Western special forces.
If the same happens in Syria, it is the long-suffering Syrians who will continue to suffer the most. The Islamist rebel groups fighting Assad have Western arms and money. Post-Assad, they will turn Syria into another Libya or Yemen, fertile ground for a rejuvenated ISIS and al-Qaeda.
Trump might be a better TV reality star than a president. But even he knows the West's real security lies in defeating Islamist terror groups in Syria, not ousting Assad.
By attacking Assad with Tomahawk missiles and defying Russia, Trump has given himself elbow room and quietened criticism from the Washington establishment.
His next target should be Raqqa and west Mosul where ISIS, under siege, is busy celebrating the US missile strike on Assad.