President Trump’s brilliant stroke against Caveman Assad’s Syria last Thursday not only sent a reassuring message to the civilized world, and our too-comfortable enemies, but obliterated B. Hussein Obama’s sissy foreign policy.
Four years ago when Caveman Assad laughed and stomped across B. Hussein’s fake red line on use of chemical weapons against his own people, B. Hussein quivered, sank and cowered in a shrinking corner.
Mr. Trump just showed B. Hussein how a serious president answers a dare.
The most incisive surgical delineation of Mr. Trump’s surprisingly muscular response
to Assad’s chemical-weapons slaughter of 85 of his own people came from Walter Russell Mead, a respected astute observer for decades.
While armies of societal misfits calling themselves protestors seek to create daily distractions, Prof. Mead, a political moderate, cleanly identifies four reasons Mr. Trump struck gold as well as a Syrian airfield with a stinging message.
Writing in the weekend Wall Street Journal, Prof. Mead argument:
- Prof. Mead believes “the president read the situation correctly.” Assad’s ghastly de-limbing of 85 Syrians last Tuesday was intended to test the mettle of the new White House. “President Trump concluded, correctly, that failing to respond effectively to Mr. Assad’s challenge would invite more probes and more tests.”
- “Mr. Trump chose the right response: A limited missile strike against the Syrian air base that, according to American intelligence, launched the vicious gas attack.” Having cringed throughout the eight somnambulant years of B. Hussein’s flip-flop administration, America’s global friends finally have reason to cheer our White House. “The strike reassured nervous allies, hungry for leadership but concerned about Mr. Trump’s temperament.”
- “Mr. Trump handled the process well. Congress was briefed but not asked for approval…so far Mr. Trump has stayed well within the mainstream of American presidents dating back to the 18th century.”
- “Mr. Trump gets extra points for deftness. He struck at a Russian proxy while holding a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in which North Korea was a major topic.”
If B. Hussein had managed just one moment like Mr. Trump’s, he could have been regarded as a potentially sober president instead of a work-averse dilettante.