Day 77: Making war with Syria

After a devastating chemical attack on Tuesday, Syria is dominating the news today, and events have unfolded quickly. In mostly chronological order:

• Trump has no idea what he's doing, and is dangerously ignorant of the situation in Syria.
• Trump's policy on Syria is in a perpetual state of flux, and the Pentagon doesn't know how to respond.
• Tillerson started making statements about the US facilitating regime change in Syria.
• Then, tonight, news hit that the US had launched a military strike against a Syrian airbase, spending around $50 million on Tomahawk cruise missiles. Another article.
• Paul Ryan, of course, called the response "appropriate and just".
• Apparently, Russia was warned of the imminent airstrikes.

So, this is basically an act that Syria will construe as an act of war, and may well be the beginning of a proxy war against Russia, who have been backing Assad's regime in Syria. We are once again seeing that the President's role as Commander in Chief is quite significant in foreign affairs. Except that this time, we have a fucking moron in charge, and his team is woefully unprepared to advise him. I have zero faith in our administration's ability to not escalate this and draw the US into yet another war.

I am seriously worried that we'll wake up tomorrow and discover that the world is literally falling apart. Add Syria to escalations in North Korea... About the only thing I'm certain of is that Trump is going to make a mess of it, and lead to a huge and expensive loss of lives, with no objectives, and little to show for it in a few year's time.

I also worry that this is all an expensive attempt to divert from the continuing Russian investigations.

In other news:

• Kushner failed to report dozens of meetings with foreign officials when applying for his security clearance. Sounds about right.
• Nunes steps aside from the Russian congressional investigation temporarily, after ethics complaints were filed against him. He's being replaced by Mike Conway, who isn't exactly any better.
• One of those alt-government twitter accounts is apparently grating on the administration, and they're demanding the authors get unmasked. Twitter is now suing the federal government in court to uphold first amendment rights.
• Republicans have used the nuclear option and changed the senate rules in order to confirm Gorsuch. The confirmation vote will come tomorrow. Seriously disappointed in the Republican leadership, who have ultimately displayed ultimate hypocrisy and absolutely no morals.
• China is about to completely fuck over the Trump administration, who are completely unprepared for the negotiations that are about to occur.