President Donald Trump reversed his position after seeing haunting images showing victims of a chemical weapons attack in Syria.
By Sam Stein , Jessica Schulberg
A photo of a drowned Syrian boy on the banks of the Mediterranean Sea sparked a dramatic reconsideration of refugee policies worldwide in September 2015. Governments began adjusting their approach almost overnight, promising to open their borders to the afflicted even though the civil war in Syria had been raging for years by that point.
John Kerry, who at the time was secretary of state under President Barack Obama, called the photo “disturbing” and “provocative” and said the U.S. “could do a lot more to protect those people.” A week later, Obama announced that his administration would take in 10,000 more Syrian refugees.
Another dramatic news story altered policy toward Syria two months later, this time in a diametrically different direction. After a series of coordinated terror attacks in Paris left 137 dead, people called for the U.S. to stop accepting refugees. The month after those attacks, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump made his infamous call for a Muslim ban to be implemented.
Trump is now president, and his ban is tied up in legal tussles. But the news cycle is once more having an outsized impact on his geopolitical worldview.
Video of a chemical weapons attack allegedly carried out by Bashar Assad’s regime has prompted Trump to, seemingly overnight, undertake a complete reversal of approach to Syria.
Trump spent years warning against military involvement in Syria’s civil war. Now, he has begun hinting publicly about a military strike and meeting privately with lawmakers to discuss how it would progress.
And during the campaign, Trump spoke about cooperating with Russia, a close Assad ally, to fight ISIS in Syria. He also called Assad an unsavory but stable ruler.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson moved in the opposite direction when addressing reporters on Thursday.
“Steps are underway” for an international effort to remove the Syrian leader, Tillerson said, adding that “it is very important that the Russian government consider carefully their continued support for the Assad regime.”
He also spoke openly about how the news coverage of the massacre was a catalytic moment for the administration. The attack, he said, “horrified all of us and brought to the front pages and to our television screens as well the tragedy that is part of the Syrian conflict.”
Trump himself acknowledged that his thinking on the matter changed based on photos he had seen detailing the aftermath of the chemical attack. He told reporters that “something should happen” in Syria, but failed to provide any specifics.
more @ source
By Sam Stein , Jessica Schulberg
A photo of a drowned Syrian boy on the banks of the Mediterranean Sea sparked a dramatic reconsideration of refugee policies worldwide in September 2015. Governments began adjusting their approach almost overnight, promising to open their borders to the afflicted even though the civil war in Syria had been raging for years by that point.
John Kerry, who at the time was secretary of state under President Barack Obama, called the photo “disturbing” and “provocative” and said the U.S. “could do a lot more to protect those people.” A week later, Obama announced that his administration would take in 10,000 more Syrian refugees.
Another dramatic news story altered policy toward Syria two months later, this time in a diametrically different direction. After a series of coordinated terror attacks in Paris left 137 dead, people called for the U.S. to stop accepting refugees. The month after those attacks, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump made his infamous call for a Muslim ban to be implemented.
Trump is now president, and his ban is tied up in legal tussles. But the news cycle is once more having an outsized impact on his geopolitical worldview.
Video of a chemical weapons attack allegedly carried out by Bashar Assad’s regime has prompted Trump to, seemingly overnight, undertake a complete reversal of approach to Syria.
Trump spent years warning against military involvement in Syria’s civil war. Now, he has begun hinting publicly about a military strike and meeting privately with lawmakers to discuss how it would progress.
And during the campaign, Trump spoke about cooperating with Russia, a close Assad ally, to fight ISIS in Syria. He also called Assad an unsavory but stable ruler.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson moved in the opposite direction when addressing reporters on Thursday.
“Steps are underway” for an international effort to remove the Syrian leader, Tillerson said, adding that “it is very important that the Russian government consider carefully their continued support for the Assad regime.”
He also spoke openly about how the news coverage of the massacre was a catalytic moment for the administration. The attack, he said, “horrified all of us and brought to the front pages and to our television screens as well the tragedy that is part of the Syrian conflict.”
Trump himself acknowledged that his thinking on the matter changed based on photos he had seen detailing the aftermath of the chemical attack. He told reporters that “something should happen” in Syria, but failed to provide any specifics.
more @ source