Now Donald Trump Must Fight The War He Isn't Ready For - Huffington Post

Now Donald Trump Must Fight The War He Isn't Ready For
He needs a Syrian strategy fast from his understaffed Defense and State departments.
At 4:40 a.m. local time Friday in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, Donald Trump became a war president.
On his order, 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles blasted off the destroyers USS Ross and USS Porter, arced over the Syrian coastline and headed 40 miles inland. The 20-foot-long missiles skimmed over the landscape at 550 mph. As they approached the Shayrat airfield, home to Syria’s 50th Air Brigade, guidance systems pinpointed each target: The missiles carrying 1,000-pound high explosive warheads went for the two main runways, underground bunkers and hardened shelters. Other Tomahawks armed with warheads each carrying 166 lethal bomblets destroyed aircraft, fuel and ammunition depots, and other “soft” targets with red-hot jagged shrapnel and concussive force.
It was a highly technical and tightly coordinated operation, for which the military has long planned and practiced, and it appears to have been carried out flawlessly.
But giving the nod to one $94 million missile strike bought Trump far more than a presidential moment at a temporary lecturn at Mar-a-Lago, where he announced the attack Thursday night. He seemed to have a premonition that things would change earlier in the week when he acknowledged, “I now have responsibility” for Syria.

Now he really does. What comes next is the difficult and perhaps impossible job of managing the rest of this war, a conflict that has killed at least 470,000 people over six years, including 55,000 children. Syrian President Bashar Assad battles bands of murderous and heavily armed fighters, backed by Russia and Iran, as well as dwindling ranks of “moderate” rebels supported by the United States in an uneasy coalition with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and others.
The horrendous chemical attack by Syrian government forces on Tuesday caught the Trump administration ill-prepared. Candidate Trump had campaigned on an “America First!” commitment to keeping the United States far away from nasty foreign conflicts. As a result, there is no obvious public support for deepening the American military role in Syria with additional ground troops. The effort to train and equip enough regional forces to topple the Assad regime has failed. The Trump White House has no strategy to direct its next military steps and lacks the senior staffs at the Pentagon and State Department critical to devising new war management plans. At the Defense Department, in particular, only one of 53 key civilian officials ― Secretary Jim Mattis himself ― has been nominated and confirmed and is at work.

While candidate Trump boasted of having a secret plan to “destroy ISIS,” the radical Islamist militia fighting in Iraq and Syria, President Trump has given no sign of having such a plan. And yet now he’s offered a direct challenge to Assad’s regime. For all the world to see, the U.S. just pivoted from fighting ISIS to taking on Assad and his allies, Russia and Iran. Last week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson remarked that it was up to “the Syrian people” to decide Assad’s fate. On Thursday, he declared that the way forward in Syria required “an international community effort” that “would lead to Assad leaving.”
That change in goals is causing considerable angst in Washington.
“We now need a comprehensive strategy with clearly-defined purpose and objectives for how we achieve our national security goals in Syria and the region,” Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) said in a statement Friday. “We can’t pour resources and risk the lives of our troops in a new military conflict without a clear and comprehensive strategy and full consideration of the long-term ramifications,” Rep. Elizabeth Esty (D-Conn.) agreed. “The consequences of a misstep are grave,” said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.).
As in most national security crises, there isn’t much time. Tillerson heads to Moscow next week for critical meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Assad’s strongest political and military ally. Putin’s initial reaction to the U.S. airstrikes was mild. He temporarily suspended participation in a communications link that enables U.S. and Russian air controllers to avoid potential air collisions over Syria. Presumably, he too is watching for Trump’s next steps.
A clear-cut, thoughtful and practical strategy for Syria would have to consider to what degree Washington will now treat Moscow as a diplomatic colleague or a military foe in Syria; whether more U.S. airstrikes will help or hurt diplomatic initiatives to work toward a ceasefire; whether additional U.S. airstrikes or ground troops, beyond the roughly 800 Americans already deployed in Syria, are committed; and how to avoid clashes with Russian aircraft and ground troops already operating there.
Among the purely military options, for instance, is setting up “safe zones” for refugees inside Syria ― an idea that candidate Trump supported. But planning for safe zones has foundered on issues such as what forces would guard these zones on a daily basis, how to sort out actual civilian refugees from suicide bombers or militia fighters, and which combat troops would defend the zones from a concerted regime attack backed by Russian and Iranian forces.
All that is difficult enough. But the non-military aspects of the situation are more challenging.
“Much more of the heavy lifting is about the diplomatic piece than the military piece,” Christine Wormuth, senior Pentagon official for strategy and plans during the Obama administration, told The Huffington Post. “All the factors that were in place during the Obama administration that made finding a solution to this terrible conflict so difficult remain in place today,” she said.
Managing opponents like Russia and Iran, while keeping friendly allies in line, will demand extraordinary diplomatic finesse, Wormuth said. That’s without even addressing the question of who would govern Syria post-Assad. Not to mention the job of helping rebuild the country after the war.
Syria is “a horrible, intractable mess,” Wormuth said.
The Trump administration will find the new fight it launched with the Tomahawks “considerably harder” to wage without a full supporting staff, she warned.
The secretary of state, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the national security adviser “are working 24/7, I’m sure, but they can’t do everything,” Wormuth said. “They need senior lieutenants to carry out some of this.”

North Korean Defector Tells Lester Holt ‘World Should Be Ready’ - NBC News

EXCLUSIVE NEWS APR 3 2017, 7:01 AM ET
North Korean Defector Tells Lester Holt ‘World Should Be Ready’
by LESTER HOLT  and ALEXANDER SMITH

SEOUL, South Korea — A senior North Korean defector has told NBC News that the country's "desperate" dictator is prepared to use nuclear weapons to strike the United States and its allies.
Thae Yong Ho is the most high profile North Korean defector in two decades, meaning he is able to give a rare insight into the secretive, authoritarian regime.
According to Thae, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is "desperate in maintaining his rule by relying on his [development of] nuclear weapons and ICBM." He was using an acronym for intercontinental ballistic missiles — a long range rocket that in theory would be capable of hitting the U.S.
"Once he sees that there is any kind of sign of a tank or an imminent threat from America, then he would use his nuclear weapons with ICBM," he added in an exclusive interview on Sunday.
Thae was living in London and serving as North Korea's deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom when he and his family defected to South Korea and were announced to the world in August.
He was not directly involved in North Korea's weapons program but believes his country "has reached a very significant level of nuclear development."
North Korea is estimated to have upward of eight nuclear weapons but has not demonstrated the ability to attach them to a long-range rocket, an ICBM, capable of hitting the U.S.
Analysts are unsure exactly how close the regime is to achieving this aim, but a senior official told NBC News in Januarythat his government was ready to test-fire an ICMB "at any time, at any place."
Adm. Scott Swift, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, told NBC News that American officials were particularly troubled by this latest threat.
"They have the nuclear capability — they've demonstrated that," he said. "And then, where they're going with the miniaturization of that, whether they can actually weaponize a missile, that's what's driving the current concern."
Thae's interview with NBC News comes against a backdrop of rising tensions surrounding North Korea, which has significantly increased its missile and nuclear tests under Kim's rule.
President Donald Trump told the Financial Times newspaper on Mondaythat "something had to be done" about North Korea. This came after Defense Secretary James Mattis said the country "has got to be stopped" and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said military action was "on the table."
"It does feel more dangerous — I'll give you three reasons," according to Adm. James Stavridis, an NBC News analyst and dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Massachusetts. "One is [Kim's] own precarious situation in command of the nation. Number two is the instability in South Korea. We've just seen the South Korean president indicted, arrested, and incarcerated."
"And, number three, a new and more aggressive American foreign policy coming from Washington," he added.
Some analysts have warned that military action against the country might be very difficult and even disastrous. An invasion could risk a retaliatory strike against U.S. allies of Japan and South Korea, whose capital, Seoul, is just 50 miles from the border.
Nonetheless, Thae warned America and its allies to be prepared.
"If Kim Jong Un has nuclear weapons and ICBMs, he can do anything," he said. "So, I think the world should be ready to deal with this kind of person."
He added that "Kim Jong Un is a man who can do anything beyond the normal imagination" and that "the final and the real solution to the North Korean nuclear issue is to eliminate Kim Jong Un from the post."
Kim came to power in 2012 and has defined his strongman premiership by the pursuit of a nuclear weapon that can hit the U.S. He has conducted more missile tests than in the rest of the country's history combined, and three of North Korea's five nuclear tests came under his watch.
According to Thae, Kim is obsessed with obtaining nukes because he saw what happened to Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, both of whom abandoned their countries' weapons of mass destruction programs and then were overthrown by Western-backed forces.
Many analysts agree that Kim sees a nuclear weapon — and the retaliatory threat it poses — as an insurance policy against a similar strategy being pursued against him.
"That's why Kim Jong Un strongly believes that only a nuclear weapon can guarantee his rule," Thae said.
According to the former diplomat, the world should look to Kim's past actions to see what he is capable of. The young leader has reportedly been responsible for purges and executions of top officials and even members of his own family.
Last month, according to U.S. and South Korean intelligence officials, he masterminded the assassination of his own half-brother, Kim Jong Nam, at an airport in Malaysia.
"Kim Jong Un is a person who did not even hesitate to kill his uncle and a few weeks ago, even his half-brother," Thae said. "So, he is a man who can do anything to remove [anyone in] his way."
Since his defection Thae has been making media appearances and giving talks denouncing North Korea's controlling and often brutal society. For this reason he believes he could be the next victim.
"I am already a marked man," he said. "Kim Jong Un wants to eliminate any person or any country which poses a threat to him. And I think I am really a great threat to him."
Thae was the highest-ranking North Korean official to abandon the regime and enter public life in South Korea since the 1997 defection of Hwang Jang Yop, who was responsible for crafting "Juche" — North Korea's state ideology, which blends elements of Marxism with ultra-nationalism.
He made the decision to switch sides, he said, after his two sons began asking questions about why North Korea did not allow the internet, why there was no proper legal system and why officials were executed without trial.
His sons also complained they were being mocked by their British friends.
"All of my family members were a little bit frightened, you know, on that day," he said of the moment he decided to escape. "But I always told them that we have to try to be as peaceful as possible. We should carry the normal faces and normal feelings so that our plan of defection should not be noticed by anyone in the embassy."
This came at a high price, however. He was able to escape with his wife and children — but he fears his brother and sister in North Korea have been punished for his actions.
"Our freedom here is achieved at the cost of the sacrifice of my family members left in North Korea," he said. "When a defection of my level happens, the North Korean regime usually sends the family members of high officials, defectors, to remote areas or labor camps and, to some extent, even to political prison camps as well."
This fate is not unique. More than 100,000 people are believed to have been detained in North Korea's notorious gulags, where they are subjected to forced labor, torture and executions — treatment the United Nations said was "strikingly similar" to the atrocities of Nazi Germany.
Families are taken away by the country's secret police for arbitrary crimes such as "gossiping" about the state.
This is all part of the dictatorship's attempt to restrict information reaching North Korean families from the outside world. Most people cannot use the internet or access foreign media — Kim's attempt to maintain the pretense that his country is prosperous and the Western world is failing.
In all, North Korea "remains one of the most repressive states in the world," according to Human Rights Watch.
But according to Thae, the mask is slipping. More and more, North Koreans are able to watch South Korean films, giving them a true picture of their far more prosperous neighbor.
"I'm absolutely sure that once North Korean people are educated enough, then they may stand up," according to the former ambassador. "North Korean population now knows well that South Korea is democratic, the society and economy here are very well."
This, Thae said, "has already made the North Korean population not believe what the regime has been teaching and has been brainwashing them."
He added: "I think this is really a great change in people's mind, because they do not believe in the government's propaganda system."
In this shift may even lie the seeds of fundamental change in North Korea, according to Thae.
"I think that is very important. And once the people do not believe in what the leadership is saying, then there is a great possibility for possible uprising: what happened in Soviet Union, what happened in communist system in Eastern Europe," he said.
"Because when the people in those Eastern European countries knew that the Western Europe were much better than Eastern Europe — the democratic society was much better than communist society and one-party system — all of a sudden people stood up against the system," he added. "These things could also happen in North Korea."
Thae said that he and other defectors can play a crucial part removing Kim.
"Every day I am living in order to accelerate the speed of my return home," he said. "I think defectors like me, we should all unite together to bring down Kim Jong Un's regime."

Donald Trump's biggest fans desert him over Syria air strikes - Independent

Donald Trump's biggest fans desert him over Syria air strikes
The decision to launch air strikes on Syria marks a major U-turn from the president's previous policies
* Andrew Griffin
* @_andrew_griffin
* Friday 7 April 2017
In what was a quick and extreme U-turn from previous positions, Mr Trump ordered US missile launches at an air base in the country, in response to a chemical weapons attack. It represented a break from many of Mr Trump’s campaign positions, primarily a promise that he would focus on “America first” and oppose intervention elsewhere in the world.
That has led supporters to abandon the president, saying they would no longer support or vote for Mr Trump. Many accused him of conducting the same policies that would have been instituted by Hillary Clinton, while others suggested that he had lied or was having his decisions made by other parts of the US state.
“I guess Trump wasn’t ‘Putin’s puppet’ after all, he was just another deep state/Neo-Con puppet,” wrote Paul Joseph Watson, a British vlogger who works at Alex Jones’s Infowars website. “I’m officially OFF the Trump train.”
Mr Watson said that he would instead divert his attention to Marine Le Pen, the French far-right politician who he said “tried to warn Trump against this disaster”. He then sent another tweet directly to Mr Trump that read: “Americans didn’t vote for you to intensify Hillary’s disastrous foreign policy” and included a link to one of Ms Clinton’s speeches.
Cassandra Fairbanks, a prominent Trump supporter and online activist, also said that she might stop supporting Mr Trump. She said that she was “trying to remain hopeful”, but that “this is too far”.
“I am devastated,” she wrote. “This isn’t who we voted for.”
Many other less prominent Twitter users scalded Mr Trump for having opposed intervention in the past and now having committed to it. They suggested that Mr Trump was in fact in the service of what they see as the “deep state”, and wasn’t the anti-establishment figure that he portrayed himself as during the election.
Former Ukip leader Nigel Farage, who has been one of Mr Trump’s most prominent cheerleaders since his election, suggested that the decision to support intervention was a concern.
Mr Trump had suggested in old tweets that he thought attacking Syria would be a move a president would make when they were losing support. He said that Mr Obama was only considering launching similar attacks because his polling numbers were low – though his approval ratings were higher than Mr Trump's now historically low numbers.
Others pointed to old tweets from Mr Trump’s supporters, including Sean Hannity. He had criticised Obama for playing golf after suggesting air strikes on Syria – a criticism that is now being made of Mr Trump.
Mr Trump said that he decided to launch the air strikes after seeing horrifying videos and images from the aftermath of the chemical attack in Syria. At least 80 people were killed in that incident, including many children.
“Tonight I call on all civilised nations to join us in seeking to end this slaughter and bloodshed in Syria and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types,” Mr Trump said in a press conference announcing the air strikes.