The other day, US President Donald Trump cancelled his first official trip to Latin America, which was supposed to be a very important summit that would serve to improve the tensions between North and Central America in order to focus on the crisis in Syria, speaks to his brain trust and figures out the action that the US government would be taking in response to the chemical attack launched by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on his own people.
Lo and behold, after much deliberation, Trump has decided to launch a series of air strikes against the Assad regime in Syria in the hopes that it will sort everything out and there will be peace in the volatile nation now.
Many detractors have called Trump’s actions hypocritical because he is bombing a country for treating its own citizens unfairly when the citizens of Flint (Michigan) have had their supply of drinking water poisoned by the US government and the Native American protestors at Standing Rock were gassed by US law enforcement. A lot of critics have sarcastically noted that they hope the Assad regime won’t bomb America back in retaliation.
Trump stands by his decision
Despite all the controversy and criticism surrounding Trump’s decision to send a bunch of missiles to Syria in order to solve his problems, the President is standing by his decision. He said, “Mission accomplished,” in regards to the air strikes.
Trump has blamed the “fake news media” for misconstruing the effects that his strikes have had and convincing the wider US population (and the world) that they were a bad or misguided idea.
Both Russia and Syria deny that there was ever a chemical attack in the town of Douma on the 7th of April. They claim that the attack was staged and never actually took place.
Now, if you want to hear some fake news, that’s fake news for you. People from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons have actually gone down there to take a look around. They’ve also got people in Damascus. They’ve met with actual Syrian officials. They can confirm that a chemical attack has taken place in the area.
But still, the Assad regime denies it.
Trump gleefully tweeted about his “perfectly executed strike” and sang praises for his allies in the governments of the UK and France for their involvement in the strikes and the decision to make them. He praises the two countries for “their wisdom” and for the strength of their military forces. The President added that his air strikes on Syria “could not have had a better result.” That’s when he concluded the tweet with “Mission accomplished!”
Even the term ‘Mission accomplished’ has been criticised
Some critics have even come out to attack Trump’s use of the phrase “Mission accomplished!” at the end of his tweet. Ari Fleischer, who used to work as the Press Secretary under the administration of former President George W.
Bush, has said that he “would have recommended” against the use of that phrase, which was made popular by old episodes of the spy series “Mission: Impossible.” Still, the President has defended his use of the term (so the air strikes weren’t the only decision that he’s had to publicly defend over the past couple of days), saying that it is a “great military term.”
On the topic of the term “Mission accomplished,” Trump added, “It should be brought back. Use often!” Lord knows where he’s gotten this idea that the outdated term is really cool and should be brought back into common usage. It probably has more to do with the defence of his own language than his vision for the future of the American vocabulary. Either way, he’s been saying that the criticism of his use of the term is the only negative thing the press has to say about his air strikes, although this is apparently not true.