The NPR Politics Podcast - President Trump Announces Air Strikes On Syria

Episode Date: April 14, 2018

President Trump announced the United States has joined with France and the UK to launch military strikes in Syria in response to last week's suspected chemical weapons attack on civilians in a Damascus suburb. This episode: host/White House correspondent Tamara Keith, congressional correspondent Susan Davis, and national security editor Phil Ewing. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is the NPR Politics Podcast, and we're here with a special breaking news episode. My fellow Americans, a short time ago, I ordered the United States Armed Forces to launch precision strikes on targets associated with the chemical weapons capabilities of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. That was President Trump earlier tonight announcing that the United States had joined with France and the U.K. to launch military strikes in Syria in response to last week's suspected chemical weapons attack on civilians in a Damascus suburb. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House for NPR.

I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. And I'm Phil Ewing, national security editor. And before we get to our conversation, let's just hear a little bit more of President Trump's remarks delivered from the White House pretty late on Friday night. The purpose of our actions tonight is to establish a strong deterrent against the production, spread, and use of chemical weapons. Establishing this deterrent is a vital national security interest of the United States. The combined American, British, and French response to these atrocities will integrate

all instruments of our national power – military, economic, and diplomatic. We are prepared to sustain this response until the Syrian regime stops its use of prohibited chemical agents. I also have a message tonight for the two governments most responsible for supporting, equipping, and financing the criminal Assad regime. To Iran and to Russia, I ask, what kind of a nation wants to be associated with the mass murder of innocent men, women, and children?

The nations of the world can be judged by the friends they keep. No nation can succeed in the long run by promoting rogue states, brutal tyrants, and murderous dictators. So we'll get to the Russia part in a minute. But Phil, what do we know about these airstrikes that were launched? The Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joe Dunford, gave a briefing at the Pentagon after the President spoke in those remarks we just heard. And they gave us a high level description of what took place. American, British and French cruise missiles and warplanes attacked a chemical weapons

scientific research center in Damascus, a second chemical weapons site and one that was primarily used for storing nerve agents like sarin and their chemical precursors. In other words, the ingredients used to make them. And then the third target was a chemical weapons storage facility and a military command post. And according to Mattis, that's where operations stop this evening. So although you heard the president say in that clip that these operations would continue so long as the Assad regime continues chemical weapons attacks, there are no more strikes planned beyond the wave that we've learned about this evening. Secretary Mattis said the amount of ordnance used in

tonight's attack was about twice the amount of the ordnance used in last year's attack. In that case, we have since learned there were about 59 cruise missiles shot by the United States at Syria last year. So if you double that, that's roughly 120 or so cruise missiles and standoff weapons launched from warships in the Eastern Mediterranean and human piloted warplanes, again, U.S. Air Force bombers, as well as French and British military aircraft. I want to rewind just slightly because you're talking about last year. So we should talk about last year. We should talk about how we got here.

That's right. Which is that this time last year, almost literally a year and a week ago. The U.S. unilaterally launched these airstriaeda and ISIS. And then there's the Syrian regime, which is supported by Russia and Iran. And the Obama administration never quite figured out what it wanted to do about anything in the Syrian war and especially the use by the Assad regime of chemical weapons until it kind of stumbled upon this goal of, in concert with other powers, getting the Syrian regime to surrender what was called its declared stockpile, which would be neutralized on a ship at sea in 2014. But it turns out that the Syrian regime didn't turn over all of its declared stockpile, and it can use chlorine, which is not technically a chemical weapon, as a chemical weapon, either by itself or in concert with nerve agents like sarin. And so last year, after another horrific chemical attack by the Assad government, President Trump decided that he was going to take the step that Obama never was willing to do, which was to use military

action directly against the Syrian regime with this cruise missile attack that you mentioned a moment ago. And last year, it targeted an airfield used by the Syrian military, its aircraft and some of their support equipment. And if you want to think of it this way, the United States destroyed part of the capability that Syria can use to actually deliver these weapons. Tonight, the United States says it's targeted the research and programs for stockpiling and making these weapons. And it hopes to set back the Assad regime's ability to use them by some amount of time. And no action by the United States or its allies in the West has ever really gotten to that result that Trump wanted in terms of eliminating the ability for chemical weapons attacks in Syria. So, Sue, last year, this was a pretty big political moment for a new

president. And he got bipartisan support for making the decision to move forward and to launch that strike, that targeted single strike. How's the reaction this time? I think it's largely similar. There is always voices from Capitol Hill, and we've heard some tonight from people like Rand Paul, a Republican senator from Kentucky, Congressman Tom Massey, people who view strikes like this as unconstitutional, who say they don't believe that the president has the legal authority to essentially bomb a nation state without the authorization of Congress. On the whole, Congress has agreed that essentially the president can do what is called precision strikes, surgical strikes, one-off strikes, and he has the authority to do that. I do think that it also is on the broader level, what we're seeing here tonight is we're still trying to figure out what the Trump foreign policy doctrine is, right? Yeah, I don't think we know what the Trump doctrine is. On the one hand, you know, he is someone who campaigned as an isolationist on bringing American troops home. Just recently, he was talking about getting troops out of Syria,

but then also likes to take a more muscular interventionist stance and spoke very clearly tonight, not just only about national security implications, but humanitarian implications of what was happening there. So I still think in many ways, Capitol Hill's trying to figure out, you know, what Trump is going to do on foreign policy. It's a very unpredictable front. And there's multiple burners going right now on the foreign policy front, not just in Syria, but with Russia relations, which, you know, with what happened tonight also gets at the complicated Russia relationship and, you know, enhanced military, potentially military action in other places in the world. So, you know, on the whole, I think that he has the support he needs from Capitol Hill. But I do think that there is one there is a side debate going on right now about whether they do need to renew the debate over the authorization of the use of military force. I think it's important to remind people that every single military action that has been taken since the September 11th,

2001 terror attacks have all been legally justified under two authorization to use for military force or the War Powers Resolution, that Congress has taken absolutely no legal role or legislative branch role in defining any military mission since then. There have been some boomlets of effort for Congress to get involved at times. President Obama in 2012 set out this red line saying that if Assad used chemical weapons, that would be a red line. The following year, Assad did use chemical weapons. And President Obama said that he felt that the U.S. military should respond. But then he asked Congress to authorize the use of military force in that case. And Congress didn't come through.

Well, it got complicated, right? Well, it did. You know, I mean, there was a presumption at the time that Congress was not going to be able to have the support it needed to authorize those strikes. And then Putin stepped in and they cut a deal and Obama backed off in 2013. You know, I will say very clearly, Congress likes to scold and it doesn't want to take responsibility. You know, the easiest thing that they can do is sit back and criticize a president making these decisions. And when push comes to shove, they don't want to take the vote that would give them ownership of any of these decisions. And when push comes to shove, they don't want to take the vote that would give

them ownership of any of these decisions. As we have seen, there are no clean or easy solutions to these foreign policy calls. What is interesting about this dynamic, because we did have a Democratic president with Republicans in control of Congress in 2013, we're seeing almost an inverse political reaction to, you know, Republicans were very skeptical that the president had this authority to do it. They were very critical of his decision of his foreign policy, specifically critical of taking military action without a broader strategy, which I think we can argue we're still in that same position. Now that there's a Republican president in power, Republicans on Capitol Hill broadly are very supportive of this action. He does generally have some support among Democrats, but they're much more willing to criticize the president for a lack of a broader foreign policy strategy. So, you know, Congress is much more political. You could even say craven

at some points about these decisions. But there has been a lot of criticism and a lot of criticism that comes from within the chamber to say that they have abdicated their constitutional role in having a more robust oversight, authorization, engagement on these big, weighty questions. I think one big difference between this year and last year is that this year, U.S. allies were involved, France and the U.K. And Theresa May, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, she laid out a justification for this that gets at something bigger than any single one chemical weapons attack on civilians, that put this in a larger context of the world. This is not about intervening in a civil war. It is not about regime change.

It is about a limited and targeted strike that does not further escalate tensions in the region and that does everything possible to prevent civilian casualties. And while this action is specifically about deterring the Syrian regime, it will also send a clear signal to anyone else who believes they can use chemical weapons with impunity. Does it send a clear signal? I think that that is an interesting comment that she makes because we are here one year later having the same conversation. And I don't think it is clear that a one-off single surgical military strike against Assad is going to be the thing that ends chemical weapon use in Syria. I don't think it does send a clear signal. The only signal that you could argue it sends is that the West will decide sometimes

which weapons sometimes it's willing to punish the use of, sometimes in a conflict that it otherwise tries to absence itself from. The Assad regime, the extremist forces on the ground in Syria, their Russian and Iranian sponsors have been responsible for endless human death and misery in Syria using all kinds of other horrific means besides chemical weapons, from barrel bombs to military aircraft provided by the Russian government to combat on the ground. And this message the West is sending is that every once in a while, when there are pictures on TV that we can't ignore of something horrific taking place, we'll exert ourselves over the course of one evening. But as we said at the top of the show, given the track record of the Western governments in dealing with this conflict, I'm not sure whether Assad's government is going to get the message about using these chemical weapons again. But let me just jump in and say,

like, didn't President Trump say that this would be sustained? So the question then is, what does that mean? And what over the course of the last six months, Assad has allegedly used chlorine in a number of attacks. What what will be the threshold for another series of strikes? What does sustained mean coming from Trump? And how does that jibe with Mattis saying this is a one off? That's an excellent question. That's something that our colleagues at the Pentagon are going to jibe with Mattis saying this is a one-off? That's an excellent question. That's something that our colleagues at the Pentagon are going to be asking Secretary Mattis and other defense officials on Saturday morning when they're expected to have a follow-up

briefing with more details about this initial wave of attacks. But it also speaks to something that Sue was talking about earlier, which is if the United States gets into the business of striking Syria more frequently or in response to specific actions, which Assad can be guaranteed will trigger one of these responses by the U.S. and its allies, that's going to sound much more difficult for the president to sell to members of Congress as, as she described, a precision strike or a targeted strike. If the president is effectively committing the United States to a new policy where it's going to police the weapons of war in use in Syria for the duration of the conflict there. There's going to be a much bigger debate in Washington about his authority to do that and the cost-benefit situation on the ground there. Because the other thing that's different from a year ago is the position the

Russian government has taken about this action. The Russians have bought themselves a seat at the poker table in Syria. They've deployed a number of military forces, their ships and aircraft. They've provided all kinds of assistance to the government. And they were messaging very clearly before these attacks through their own spokespeople and at the United Nations how much they opposed the United States or the West taking some kind of military action in Syria. We heard that again this evening from the Russian ambassador. Can we pause for a second on Russia? President Trump used some very strong language about Russia. But ultimately, and earlier in the week, he almost made it sound like Russia would be a targeter, that if Russia had complicity, that Russia had better watch out based on

tweets and other other statements. But Russia was was not targeted here. That's right. The Russian military position has made these strikes all the more fraught and made the situation all the more risky. Because, again, there are many Russian troops and warplanes and ships and military equipment in Syria in places that might have potentially been targeted by the United States if they hadn't been there, because the United States doesn't want to accidentally kill a Russian soldier and create a chain of escalation where the Russians fire back or the Russians respond elsewhere in the world to try to attack American or Western interests. And the Defense Secretary Jim Mattis was in Congress this week, and he told lawmakers there, as we're evaluating our potential military options, the counsel that I'm giving to the president is, if he wants to do something, we have to do

something where we can be confident about the outcome. And if you go with your eyes open into a situation where there are many forces of another nation involved, in addition to the one that you want to punish for this behavior, you have to be really confident that you're going to hit what you're aiming at, and that you can stop the action, as it were, after one evening, which the United States says it was able to do. But it's what made this situation so fraught. And according to press reports, the president's new national security advisor, John Bolton, was supporting a much broader campaign that would really punish the Assad regime. So not just his chemical weapons capability, but all the other aspects of

its power, of the way that it administers the parts of Syria that it controls. And so at the same time that President Trump said that this could be sustained, he also wanted, it seemed, to make it clear that he does not see this as a never-ending thing. America does not seek an indefinite presence in Syria under no circumstances. As other nations step up their contributions, we look forward to the day when we can bring our warriors home. The phrase that he used about the ability to sustain this response was also the phrase that I noticed immediately was what members of Congress also bid onto in this speech. And I do think it speaks to how

the reservations of what's happening here does kind of bend the ideological curve, because I noticed one of the responses came from Seth Moulton. He's a liberal Democrat. He was a Marine. He served in the early days of the Iraq War. And he tweeted, sustained response equals war, saying that if that's boots on the ground, if that's additional bombings, he has to come to Congress. And then at the same time, I saw Warren Davidson, who's a Republican from Ohio, he's part of the Freedom Caucus, saying, you know, I support what the president did tonight, but are we abdicating our duty as members of Congress? If this is a sustained strategy, we need to be part of this debate. And I think there is some and there has been some existing regret that Congress has sort of abdicated its duties here. But I think that that regret is

growing. And I think it's growing because it does bend this ideological curve between liberals and conservatives. You mean like it's not a line, it's a circle. That Congress has a constitutional responsibility to do more when it comes to waging war and that they have taken a backseat and that they are living with the consequences of that. One point I think we should also just make, because we are talking about a military action in response to what is a humanitarian crisis. If you've watched any of these videos coming out of Syria or about the gassing of children, and I think this is one thing that has really stuck with the president, right, that he's talked about the images of children being one of the impetuses for action, is also the other end of that equation is the Syrian refugee crisis. And our colleagues at NPR this week also wrote about this, but about how at the same time that we're taking this military action, so far in 2018, the U.S. has only allowed in 11 Syrian refugees.

So all of these problems are connected. And I think this goes to the point that people make where this can't just be a military solution. There has to be a diplomatic and a political solution. And I don't think there's answers to any of those questions right now. Well, and the president certainly at this moment has no desire to talk about Syrian refugees. Obviously, we are going to learn a lot more about exactly what happened tonight and what U.S. policy will be going forward. And we'll keep talking about it on the podcast. Promise to be back in your feed real soon. You can keep up with

our coverage on NPR.org, NPR Politics on Facebook, and of course, on your local public radio station. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. And I'm Phil Ewing, National Security Editor. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.