Trump Turns Neocon -- Fires Steve Bannon and Attacks Syria

President Donald J. Trump has turned into a full-blown Neocon with his missile attack on Syria.

Reporting for the Wall Street Journal [April 6, 2017], Gordon Lubold and Dion Nissenbaum write:

The U.S. military launched nearly 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles against a Syrian air base Friday, responding to mounting calls for a display of force in the wake of this week’s suspected chemical-weapons attack in Syria. The strikes represented the first time a U.S. military operation deliberately targeted the regime of President Bashar al-Assad...

"The first time." This means that Trump has escalated the war from whatever Obama had been doing. The WSJ quotes Trump as saying:

"It is in the vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons," Mr. Trump said. "There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons." 

I guess the part about this attack being in the "vital national security interest" of the United States is meant to signal that Trump is still following an "America First" foreign policy. Sort of like his continuing generous foreign aid to Israel.

This attack on Syria comes shortly after Trump removed "alt right" figure Steve Bannon from the National Security Council, replacing him with the usual Neocon hawks.

Reporting for the Wall Street Journal [April 5, 2017], Carol E. Lee and Eli Stokols write:

President Donald Trump's chief strategist, Steve Bannon, has been removed from the National Security Council's principals committee, and top U.S. intelligence officials have been restored as permanent members, according to a new presidential memorandum.

It's beginning to look as if Trump has surrendered to the Deep State. After suffering political paralysis during his first two months in office, Trump is determined to become a historically "successful" president, even that means rubber-stamping the identical globalist, war-mongering policies of the Clinton, Bush, and Obama years.

Trump is becoming Obama in whiteface. Who, in turn, was Bush in blackface.

Adding to the irony, the Left, until now, has attacked Trump for being too pro-Russia and too isolationist (i.e., for not saber rattling). But now that Trump has attacked Russia's ally, Syria, the Left will attack Trump for being pro-war (i.e., for the opposite).

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

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