["Syrian military officials appeared to anticipate Thursday night's raid on Syria's Shayrat air base, evacuating personnel and moving equipment ahead of the strike, according to an eyewitness." (Source: <http://abcnews.go.com/International/eyewitness-syrian-military-anticipated-us-raid/story?id=46641107>.)
This was presumably made possible because the Russians, forewarned by the US, didn't forget to inform its host and client well in time. As against that, now, there is talk of "substantial expansion of rules of engagement", in the run up to the Tillerson visit to Moscow. Things are, evidently, fraught with grave dangers and also a pretty bit messy. The two articles below, more so, if read together, bring out this aspect in a rather compelling manner. A relevant (single) paragrpah from the article, at sl. I below: “It’s head-spinning,” said Philip Gordon, a special assistant to the president on the Middle East in the Obama administration. “They went from vehement opposition to any kind of military intervention to executing those strikes and saying that’s what we would be doing any time chemical weapons are used. And, here is key passage from the article, at II below: It’s hard to tell not only what the (U.S.) policy (toward Syria) is but what the reasons for it are, a problem exacerbated, or rather caused, by the fact the administration does not speak with one voice. President Trump himself has been uncharacteristically quiet about why and how he decided to order airstrikes against a target in Syria, and for what they indicate about U.S. policy toward Syrian President Bashar al-Assad going forward. Is it a one-off because of a chemical-weapons attack, or the start of a broader offensive against Assad? Has Trump established a new red line that, if crossed, will trigger American action? In the absence of clear articulations from the Oval Office, here are some of the (discordant) voices driving Syria policy.] I/II https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/10/syria-top-of-agenda-as-g7-foreign-ministers-meet-in-italy G7 White House warns of potential US 'red line' over Syria barrel bomb attacks Criteria would mark substantial expansion of rules of engagement, as Rex Tillerson says US would come to defense of civilians ‘anywhere’ amid G7 talks Rex Tillerson talks to reporters at a war memorial in Italy. Photograph: Max Rossi/Reuters Julian Borger and David Smith in Washington, Heather Stewart in London and Spencer Ackerman in New York Tuesday 11 April 2017 09.07 BST First published on Monday 10 April 2017 12.00 BST The Trump administration has signalled much broader grounds for future military intervention in Syria, suggesting it might retaliate against the Assad regime for barrel bomb attacks. ***On the eve of a critical visit to Moscow at a time of high US-Russian tensions over Syria, the US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, appeared to go even further, saying his country would come to the defence of innocent civilians “anywhere in the world”.*** [Emphasis added.] The administration had initially stressed strictly limited objectives for a cruise missile strike last week on a Syrian air force base, saying it was intended to deter the repeat of a chemical attack on Tuesday against civilians and that the focus of US efforts in Syria remains combating the Islamic State (Isis). 'The dead were wherever you looked': inside Syrian town after gas attack Read more On Monday, however, the White House spokesman, Sean Spicer, widened the criteria for retaliation. “When you watch babies and children being gassed, and suffer under barrel bombs, you are instantaneously moved to action,” he said. “I think this president’s made it very clear that if those actions were to continue, further action will definitely be considered by the United States.” On Tuesday diplomats gathered in Italy for a second day of G7 talks dominated by the war in Syria, as officials in Washington, the UK and elsewhere floated the possibility of new sanctions on the Syrian and Russian military. US intelligence believes Assad carried out last week’s attack with the chemical agent sarin, killing dozens of civilians including children. But Spicer made the first mention of the use of barrel bombs – crude munitions that can cause indiscriminate casualties. ***Pressed on whether chemical warfare as opposed to conventional warfare constitutes a red line, he replied: “I think the president’s been very clear that there were a number of lines crossed last week ... The answer is if you gas a baby, if you put a barrel bomb into innocent people, I think you will see a response from this president. That is unacceptable."*** [Emphasis added.] The White House said later that Spicer was referring to barrel bombs carrying industrial chemicals like chlorine. But that would still represent a substantial expansion of the US rules of engagement in Syria. The regime is suspected of using chlorine gas in its attacks on dozens of occasions since 2013. Tillerson made his remarks during a visit to the site of a 1944 Nazi massacre in Italy, but they clearly referred to the Trump administration’s decision on Thursday to launch missile strikes against a Syrian airbase from which the US said a regime chemical attack had been launched against civilians in a rebel-held town. St Petersburg metro explosion leaves 11 dead and dozens wounded Read more Tillerson is in Italy for a G7 foreign ministers’ meeting dominated by discussion of western policy towards Damascus and Moscow. The UK foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, who cancelled his own planned visit to Moscow on Monday, said the ministers would be “discussing the possibility of further sanctions certainly on some of the Syrian military figures and indeed on some of the Russian military figures who have been involved in coordinating the Syrian military effort”. The ministers met again early on Tuesday Morning before Tillerson flies on to Moscow. According to one G7 source, Tillerson plans to offer the Putin regime a bald choice, between cutting Bashar al-Assad loose and being rewarded with a thaw in relations with the west; or continuing to back him, and risking a Libyan-style outcome. The Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, was violently deposed and killed in 2011 by rebels lent air support by Nato powers, including the UK. Whitehall sources say Britain has been instrumental in helping to persuade the US to support the idea that Assad – and his family – must be removed from power before progress can be made. Johnson is pushing for the strongest possible conclusion, including the threat of targeted sanctions against Syrian and Russian military commanders – a proposal he judges more likely to win support than wider economic penalties against Moscow. The decision to approve the missile strike on the Shayrat Syrian air force base marked a sharp change in direction for Donald Trump, who had furiously opposed any such intervention by the Obama administration, and had pledged an “America first” foreign policy that would focus on counter-terrorism and narrowly defined US national interests. Trump emphasised the child victims of the poison gas in justifying the launch of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles aimed at infrastructure at the Shayrat base, Spicer’s comments suggested the president’s concern for Syrian children extended to victims of conventional bombing too. Over half a million people have been killed in the six years of the Syrian war. Tillerson’s comments suggested that the administration was even open to humanitarian intervention elsewhere. Rex Tillerson and Boris Johnson hold talks in Lucca. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rex Tillerson and Boris Johnson hold talks in Lucca. Photograph: Max Rossi/Reuters ***Speaking to journalists at the site of the 1944 massacre in the Tuscan village of Sant’Anna, the secretary of state said: “We rededicate ourselves to holding to account any and all who commit crimes against the innocents anywhere in the world.”*** [Emphasis added.] ***The remarks appeared to conflict with Tillerson’s own comments on Sunday in which he claimed the administration’s priority in Syria had not changed; it remained the defeat of Isis, and only after that could Syria’s political stability be considered. On the same today, the US envoy to the UN, Nikki Haley, said “getting Assad out” was one of “multiple priorities” held by the administration.*** [Emphasis added.] ***Mike Dubke, Trump’s communications director, conceded at a meeting of White House staffers last Tuesday before the missile strike that the president lacked a coherent foreign policy and said that “there is no Trump doctrine”, according to an account of the meeting by Politico.*** [Emphasis added.] ***“It’s head-spinning,” said Philip Gordon, a special assistant to the president on the Middle East in the Obama administration. “They went from vehement opposition to any kind of military intervention to executing those strikes and saying that’s what we would be doing any time chemical weapons are used.*** [Emphasis added.] “This is on a whole new level, if Tillerson is really saying we would defend the innocent anywhere in the world,” Gordon added. “If that’s the new standard, we are going to be doing a lot of intervening.” Russia has denied the Syrian regime carried out the Khan Sheikhun chemical attack, which killed more than 80 people (including in strikes on hospitals after the attacks), and has denounced the US missile strike as illegal. Tillerson is due to meet his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in Moscow. A Kremlin spokesman said there were no plans in Putin’s diary “right now” for a meeting, but US officials are expecting Putin to meet Tillerson on Wednesday. The two men had cordial relations when the Texan was in his previous job as head of the ExxonMobil oil company. Another issue that hangs over Tillerson’s trip to Moscow is the question of Russia’s complicity in the chemical attack. Russian troops are stationed at their own compound at the Sharyat base and were there at the time Washington alleges Syrian aircraft took off on Tuesday for the attack on Khan Sheikhun. The Associated Press quoted a senior US official as saying the US had concluded that Russia had prior knowledge of the Tuesday chemical attack on Khan Sheikhun. The official said a drone operated by Russians was flying over a hospital as victims of the attack were rushing to get treatment. Hours after the drone left, a Russian-made fighter jet bombed the hospital in what American officials believe was an attempt to cover up the usage of chemical weapons, the AP reported. Charles Lister, a Syria expert at the Middle East Institute, said: “I’m told the US knows of Russia’s involvement in the CW [chemical weapons] attack and hopes to use this as back-scenes leverage.” But on Monday evening, at a snap off-the-record briefing at the White House, a senior administration official rejected the claim, insisting that no such consensus about Russia’s foreknowledge exists in the intelligence community. A joint command centre made up of the forces of Russia, Iran and militias supporting the Syrian regime warned the US missile strike had crossed “red lines” and it would respond to any new aggression and increase its support for its ally. “What America waged in an aggression on Syria is a crossing of red lines. From now on we will respond with force to any aggressor or any breach of red lines from whoever it is, and America knows our ability to respond well,” the centre said in a statement published by the group on the media outlet Ilam al Harbi (War Media). The supreme leader of Iran, which provides substantial ground support to the Assad regime, has also warned the US that its intervention would prove to be a mistake for Trump. “This is their last in a series of strategic errors ... which will definitely have backlash against their own interests,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told senior commanders of the Iranian armed forces on Sunday. The most immediate issue on the agenda of Tillerson’s talks with Lavrov will be the future of a hotline between the US and Russian militaries, intended to avoid collisions between their warplanes over Syria. Moscow announced it had been suspended in reaction to the US Tomahawk strike. But on Monday, three days after the strike, Pentagon officials would not say if Russia had actually used the channel to guard against any accidental midair confrontation, and declined all comment on the subject. Statistics released by the US military show airstrikes in Syria reducing slightly in volume on Friday, the day after the strike, to seven strikes, the lowest coalition total in Syria in April. But the strike tempo picked up over the weekend, to a typical recent volume of 16 strikes on Saturday and 18 on Sunday against Isis targets in eastern Syria. Additional reporting by Saeed Kamali Dehghan II. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/04/what-is-trumps-syria-policy/522669/ What Is Trump's Syria Policy? >From political solutions to regime change, U.S. officials have offered a dizzying variety of ideas about the goals and methods of American posture toward Bashar al-Assad. The White House DAVID A. GRAHAM 1:04 PM ET As Secretary of State Rex Tillerson landed in Moscow Tuesday, a fire blazed on the margins of Vnukovo Airport. This provided at least a couple useful metaphors, depending on one’s view of the situation. Russian officials said the fire was at a garbage dump, meaning it was a literal manifestation of that most versatile of epithets, the dumpster fire, which could be applied to the state of Russo-American relations at the moment. For a more value-neutral analogy, the fire was a smoke screen, obscuring what exactly U.S. policy toward Syria is. ***It’s hard to tell not only what the policy is but what the reasons for it are, a problem exacerbated, or rather caused, by the fact the administration does not speak with one voice. President Trump himself has been uncharacteristically quiet about why and how he decided to order airstrikes against a target in Syria, and for what they indicate about U.S. policy toward Syrian President Bashar al-Assad going forward. Is it a one-off because of a chemical-weapons attack, or the start of a broader offensive against Assad? Has Trump established a new red line that, if crossed, will trigger American action? In the absence of clear articulations from the Oval Office, here are some of the voices driving Syria policy.*** [Emphasis added.] Rex Tillerson Typically the secretary of state might be a leading voice on a pressing diplomatic matter, but Tillerson has been strangely sidelined throughout his short tenure in Foggy Bottom, and he has hardly offered more clarity or reassurance on Syria. Tillerson’s trip to Russia underscores his strange position: Although he has known Vladimir Putin for years, he is being shut out of a meeting with the president. Tillerson surprised some observers when, hours before his flight to Moscow, he said in Lucca, Italy, “We rededicate ourselves to holding to account any and all who commit crimes against the innocents anywhere in the world.” Tillerson also said Russia had to choose between working with the West or with Assad, “which we believe is not going to serve Russia’s interests longer term.” By promising to go after those commit “any and all” crimes, he seemed to be suggesting an aggressively interventionist stance—a maximalist vision of America as the world’s policeman. This is striking not only because it is far more aggressive than what other Trump officials have said, but because it is seemingly at odds with Tillerson’s own comments. On Sunday, he said on ABC’s This Week that the message of strikes was that “if you violate international norms, if you violate international agreements, if you fail to live up to commitments, if you become a threat to others, at some point a response is likely to be undertaken.” Yet he also said the U.S. still believes “it is through that political process that we believe the Syrian people will lawfully be able to decide the fate of Bashar al-Assad.” Tillerson said “there is no change to our military posture” except asking Assad to cease the use of chemical weapons. So is Tillerson a super-interventionist, or taking a hands-off approach? He seems unsure. Nikki Haley The U.S. ambassador to the UN has staked out a position that seems opposite to Tillerson, who is ostensibly her boss. “There is no political solution that any of us can see with Assad at the lead,” she told CNN on Sunday. On Wednesday, the day before the U.S. missile launch, Haley spoke forcefully about the chemical-weapons attack in Idlib, and she was the first administration official to say publicly that the U.S. might launch unilateral strikes in response. She also tangled with Russia in the UN Security Council. Haley might or might not be the architect of U.S. policy, but her statements are emerging as the most reliable indicator of where American action is headed. She’s pushing Tillerson in her direction, too, as his rhetoric toward Russia becomes more aggressive. Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner Neither Trump’s daughter nor her husband has any foreign-policy experience, nor does either have a job specifically related to diplomacy, but they do have the president’s ear. Eric Trump, Ivanka’s brother, credited Ivanka Trump’s influence for the airstrikes during an interview with The Telegraph, saying the vision of suffering children in the wake of the chemical-weapons attack was operative. “Ivanka is a mother of three kids and she has influence. I’m sure she said: ‘Listen, this is horrible stuff,’” he said. “My father will act in times like that.” New York’s Gabriel Sherman reported that Kushner, who just returned from a widely mocked trip to Iraq, was a major advocate for military force. Sean Spicer The White House press secretary is not supposed to make policy from the lectern, but Spicer seems to have inadvertently done so on Monday. “If you gas a baby, if you put a barrel bomb into innocent people, I think you will see a response from this president,” Spicer said. That statement sounded close to Tillerson’s maximalism, but it stood at odds with Trump’s views before he became president. The White House has argued, in essence, that Trump was right to counsel caution years ago, but also right to act now because of the horrific Idlib attack. But Spicer’s phrasing makes clear that this is a distinction without a difference, since Assad was gassing children and barrel-bombing innocent people years ago. Later Monday, the White House reversed Spicer’s comment. “Nothing has changed in our posture,” a statement said, according to The New York Times. “The president retains the option to act in Syria against the Assad regime whenever it is in the national interest, as was determined following that government’s use of chemical weapons against its own citizens.” H.R. McMaster Trump’s national security adviser tried to split the difference between Haley and Tillerson during an appearance on Fox News Sunday, arguing that on the one hand only a political solution can end the Syrian civil war but that on the other, no political solution can involve Assad. “I think that while people are really anxious to find inconsistencies in the statements, they are in fact very consistent in terms of what is the ultimate political objective in Syria,” he said. McMaster was careful not to commit himself or the administration to any future course of action, saying that while the goal of attacks was to deter chemical-weapons use, future decisions will be made in the future. “The president will make whatever decision he thinks is in the best interest of the American people, and it will be our job to provide him with options based on how we see this conflict evolve in this period of time before us, after the strike,” McMaster said. Fox News During remarks Thursday night, McMaster told reporters, “The president was immediately notified upon news of the chemical attack.” Trump himself told a different story on Wednesday. The Times’ Maggie Haberman asked him, “Where were you when you found out about it?” He replied, “I was here. I saw it on television.” Given his viewing habits, that probably means Fox News. CNN’s Jim Acosta also reported that Trump was deeply affected by the images he saw in press reports. James Mattis The secretary of defense has kept a comparatively low profile during the latest flap. He has previously said that without Iranian patronage, Assad would have been forced out of office long ago. Mattis briefed Trump on military options ahead of U.S. strikes. In a statement Monday, the Pentagon chief and former Marine general stayed clear of indications about regime change, portraying American strikes a deterrent to further gassing. “The president directed this action to deter future use of chemical weapons and to show the United States will not passively stand by while Assad murders innocent people with chemical weapons,” Mattis said. “The Syrian government would be ill-advised ever again to use chemical weapons.” Mattis’s vague threat is a fitting encapsulation of the Trump administration’s stance on Syria at the moment. The president has shown a willingness to deploy the military, but he has not made clear when he will or won’t do it, and he has not laid out clearly what his goals are. In the absence of leadership from the top, a range of advisers are offering their own ideas. -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. 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