Mission accomplished?
What exactly is the ‘mission’ and what has the US achieved by these air strikes?
The writer is a lawyer based in Lahore and also teaches at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. He holds an LLM from New York University where he was a Hauser Global Scholar. He tweets @HNiaziii
George W Bush was upbeat as he addressed the nation aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in the spring of 2003. As Saddam Hussain’s regime stood toppled, the president’s misplaced optimism was on full display as a banner declaring ‘Mission Accomplished’ was visible behind him. By the fall of the same year, those two words would become a symbol of the lack of foresight shown by the warmongering trifecta of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld.
Fast forward to 2018 and Donald Trump shows the same naïve optimism and bravado. By tweeting ‘Mission Accomplished’ after conducting air strikes on Syrian chemical weapon facilities, Trump once again showed the world his lack of understanding of history and nuance. To accomplish a mission, it needs to be clear what the mission is in the first place. So far, we have heard nothing from Donald Trump that could give us a clear answer to this question, instead, the air strikes on Syria have only expanded the quagmire surrounding Trump and the US policy regarding the Syrian civil war. What exactly is the ‘mission’ and what has the US achieved by these air strikes?
We can only hypothesise the intentions of a man who throughout his 2016 campaign referred to repeated interventions by the US in the Middle East as ‘stupid’ and then jumped on the chance to launch missiles into Syria. Consistent has never been a term used to define Donald Trump’s decision-making. If the ‘mission’ was simply to send a strong message to the Assad regime to discontinue the use of chemical weapons, then it is hard to see how this was ‘accomplished’. That same message was sent over a year ago when a similar strike was conducted by the US in Syria in response to the use of chemical weapons, yet, Assad absorbed the blow; comfortable with the status quo that restrains the US from taking any further action as long as Russia and Iran are on his side. It is said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. Trump should take note because his missile strikes aren’t going to change Assad’s mind about using chemical weapons.
The use of chemical weapons is abhorrent to humanitarian law, so one possible objective of Trump’s ‘mission’ could be to help the Syrian people, caught in the midst of a civil war, on humanitarian grounds. But if this is true, then why is the US abandoning its troop presence in Syria at a juncture when its people are caught between a bloody civil war and a lurking Islamic State? Any humanitarian mission has been, and continues to be, an abject failure given that Trump is doing his best to prevent Syrian refugees from entering his country’s border.
Trump’s haste in conducting an air strike gives an impression of machismo rather than humanitarianism. It is doubtful whether they have had any impact at all. General McKenzie pointed out that the air strikes crippled the heart of Assad’s chemical weapons facilities, but that too is doubtful given that evidence suggests that the facilities that were targeted may not even have been operational. According to The New York Times, there have been no reports of casualties on the sites, suggesting no one was there nor have there been any reports of a chemical agent leaking. Even if we accept that the facilities were operational, General McKenzie’s statement lacks credibility on the facts. Assad allegedly used two chemical agents in his attack: chlorine and sarin. Both of which do not require sophisticated facilities to produce and create crude poisons. The heart of Assad’s chemical weapons has barely suffered a tremor.
It seems Trump and Co have created a Gordian knot out of their stance on Syria. They claim that their mission was to stop the spread of ISIS yet want ‘the other people’ to take care of the civil war, despite the fact that the spread of ISIS is directly related to the power struggles in the current Syrian civil war. They want to interfere in Syria but are wary of the Russians supporting the Assad regime. As long as Russia and Iran back Assad just how far can Trump’s ‘mission’ go?
The truth is that Trump’s air strikes achieved nothing, and the status quo remains in Syria. The US will continue to prevaricate on what exactly its stance on Syria is and the victims of this will be the Syrian people. There is no doubt that Bashar al Assad is a brutal despot who has turned Syria into a living hell for its people. If the US sincerely believes it is the guardian of freedom that it declares itself to be then it needs to be clear about what it wants to achieve and how it wishes to go about it. If the sole ‘mission’ that the US is referring to was to send a one-point message to Assad about the consequences of using chemical weapons then that message reads simply as: ‘this is the most we will do, and we refuse to involve ourselves any further.’ That message reassures only one person: Bashar al Assad, not the Syrian people who Trump claims he is trying to reassure.
The sheer irony of the US foreign policy is that when it actually has clear evidence of ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ it can do nothing. For that they have George W Bush to thank; a man who has somehow reinvented himself as an endearing clown who dances on television talk shows and makes ridiculous portraits. Fifteen years after the beginning of the Iraq war, the US agenda in the Middle East is still as nebulous as ever. You’d think we’d know the ‘mission’ by now, but we are no closer to finding that out. Fifteen years and multiple disastrous interventions in the Middle East later, the president of the United States still has the gall to proclaim ‘Mission Accomplished’ at the sight of tomahawk missiles exploding in the Middle East. But then, did we really expect anything else from Donald Trump?
Published in The Express Tribune, April 26th, 2018.
Fast forward to 2018 and Donald Trump shows the same naïve optimism and bravado. By tweeting ‘Mission Accomplished’ after conducting air strikes on Syrian chemical weapon facilities, Trump once again showed the world his lack of understanding of history and nuance. To accomplish a mission, it needs to be clear what the mission is in the first place. So far, we have heard nothing from Donald Trump that could give us a clear answer to this question, instead, the air strikes on Syria have only expanded the quagmire surrounding Trump and the US policy regarding the Syrian civil war. What exactly is the ‘mission’ and what has the US achieved by these air strikes?
We can only hypothesise the intentions of a man who throughout his 2016 campaign referred to repeated interventions by the US in the Middle East as ‘stupid’ and then jumped on the chance to launch missiles into Syria. Consistent has never been a term used to define Donald Trump’s decision-making. If the ‘mission’ was simply to send a strong message to the Assad regime to discontinue the use of chemical weapons, then it is hard to see how this was ‘accomplished’. That same message was sent over a year ago when a similar strike was conducted by the US in Syria in response to the use of chemical weapons, yet, Assad absorbed the blow; comfortable with the status quo that restrains the US from taking any further action as long as Russia and Iran are on his side. It is said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. Trump should take note because his missile strikes aren’t going to change Assad’s mind about using chemical weapons.
The use of chemical weapons is abhorrent to humanitarian law, so one possible objective of Trump’s ‘mission’ could be to help the Syrian people, caught in the midst of a civil war, on humanitarian grounds. But if this is true, then why is the US abandoning its troop presence in Syria at a juncture when its people are caught between a bloody civil war and a lurking Islamic State? Any humanitarian mission has been, and continues to be, an abject failure given that Trump is doing his best to prevent Syrian refugees from entering his country’s border.
Trump’s haste in conducting an air strike gives an impression of machismo rather than humanitarianism. It is doubtful whether they have had any impact at all. General McKenzie pointed out that the air strikes crippled the heart of Assad’s chemical weapons facilities, but that too is doubtful given that evidence suggests that the facilities that were targeted may not even have been operational. According to The New York Times, there have been no reports of casualties on the sites, suggesting no one was there nor have there been any reports of a chemical agent leaking. Even if we accept that the facilities were operational, General McKenzie’s statement lacks credibility on the facts. Assad allegedly used two chemical agents in his attack: chlorine and sarin. Both of which do not require sophisticated facilities to produce and create crude poisons. The heart of Assad’s chemical weapons has barely suffered a tremor.
It seems Trump and Co have created a Gordian knot out of their stance on Syria. They claim that their mission was to stop the spread of ISIS yet want ‘the other people’ to take care of the civil war, despite the fact that the spread of ISIS is directly related to the power struggles in the current Syrian civil war. They want to interfere in Syria but are wary of the Russians supporting the Assad regime. As long as Russia and Iran back Assad just how far can Trump’s ‘mission’ go?
The truth is that Trump’s air strikes achieved nothing, and the status quo remains in Syria. The US will continue to prevaricate on what exactly its stance on Syria is and the victims of this will be the Syrian people. There is no doubt that Bashar al Assad is a brutal despot who has turned Syria into a living hell for its people. If the US sincerely believes it is the guardian of freedom that it declares itself to be then it needs to be clear about what it wants to achieve and how it wishes to go about it. If the sole ‘mission’ that the US is referring to was to send a one-point message to Assad about the consequences of using chemical weapons then that message reads simply as: ‘this is the most we will do, and we refuse to involve ourselves any further.’ That message reassures only one person: Bashar al Assad, not the Syrian people who Trump claims he is trying to reassure.
The sheer irony of the US foreign policy is that when it actually has clear evidence of ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ it can do nothing. For that they have George W Bush to thank; a man who has somehow reinvented himself as an endearing clown who dances on television talk shows and makes ridiculous portraits. Fifteen years after the beginning of the Iraq war, the US agenda in the Middle East is still as nebulous as ever. You’d think we’d know the ‘mission’ by now, but we are no closer to finding that out. Fifteen years and multiple disastrous interventions in the Middle East later, the president of the United States still has the gall to proclaim ‘Mission Accomplished’ at the sight of tomahawk missiles exploding in the Middle East. But then, did we really expect anything else from Donald Trump?
Published in The Express Tribune, April 26th, 2018.