Bashing Bashar

Diogenes is suspending his series on presidential peccadilloes for a time to consider Trump's military adventure in Syria. Needless to say, his first response was, "Ha! The Pretender got to make things go BOOM." Upon reflection, however, he said, "Damn it, he didn't go far enough."

In his March 23 post, "Where's the Rottenness?" Dio came to the conclusion that in order effectively to change government one has to decapitate it. (Transparency demands we point out he was considering the U.S. government at the time.)

Diogenes believes the doctrine of proportionate response is ineffective, and only leads to a continuing--and likely escalating--exchange of blows. The only real solution, he believes, is the removal of one belligerent: In this case, Bashar al-Assad.

Diogenes is generally a pacifist, but he is also pragmatic. No reasonable person can deny that certain entities or forces pose a real threat to humanity. In some cases the threat may be existential, as the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction was during the Cold War. Or it may be something so foreign, so horrifying to the human spirit that to allow it to exist would profoundly destabilize our collective consciousness. The Holocaust was one such instance. Assad's program of continued attacks on his own people, using weapons banned by the United Nations, appears to be another.

Responding to Assad's horrific chemical attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun, Trump ordered an attack on the Syrian airfield from which the attacking planes were thought to have flown. That response, of course, was met with protests from Russia and Iran, and Putin summarily canceled an agreement designed to keep Russian and U.S. aircraft at safe distances in Syrian airspace.

In Trump, Putin and Ali Khamenei may have met their match in stubbornness, hardheadedness and unreasoning assurance of being in the right. It remains to be seen which side might benefit from this three-way headbanging.

The most troubling unknown is Trump's mercurial temperament. His well-documented tenacity and inability to let go of an idea or a policy once he has decided it to be right, could well lead to further attacks on Syria and an attempt to stare down the Russian and Iranian leaders. Should he try that, Diogenes believes, he will find himself out of his league. If he finds himself humiliated by other heads of state--his alleged peers--he may retaliate unexpectedly, rashly and inappropriately.

Diogenes would not disapprove an action to take out Assad. But he remembers a 1973 meeting he had with a British colleague who predicted that World War III would begin in the Middle East. At the time he expressed skepticism, but as that part of the world has become increasingly unstable, he has become more concerned.

In this situation Dio fears that Trump has reached a tipping point: A reasoned and decisive action with the goal of removing Assad, coupled with aggressive diplomacy, might prove beneficial. But a typical Trumpian outburst could bring disaster.

The Great Pretender must listen to reason and keep the dogs of war in their kennel.

--Richard Brown