Foreign Policy Analyst: Middle Eastern Leaders Probably Urged Trump Strike Against Syria
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Foreign policy analyst Ed Turzanski reacted to Donald Trump's decision to launch missile strikes against Syria following Bashar al-Assad's using sarin gas against civilians earlier this week, saying that he believes other leaders in the region, most prominent being King Abdullah of Jordan, urged Trump to take action.
"I would suspect that Abdullah and also President el-Sisi of Egypt said to Trump, listen, this is a hot mess, I don't blame you for not wanting to troops in here, but you're the United States. If you allow chemical weapons to be used this way, know this, you'll have more refugees coming into your country, more problems and there will be more uses of chemical weapons. There's only one power on earth that can get people's attention and it's you, the United States."
Several Killed In U.S. Military Strike Against Syrian Regime
Turzanski, from the Foreign Policy Research Institute, pointed out previous statement's from Abdullah that seem to affirm Trump's stance on refugees seeking to flee the region.
'The President's got this exactly right. The way to prevent the refugees is to deal with the problem on the ground. You fix what's wrong in their homes. You don't start importing large numbers of people whom you don't know."
Ultimately, he believes Trump's action is more about sending a message to the Assad, Russia and the world than completely debilitating Syria's ability to wage war.
"Did we knock out Assad's capability to do bad things? No. We showed him, in fact, that we can destroy portions of that airfield and really not make it impossible for the Russians to leave if they want to leave. Because we could've really destroyed that airfield completely. He said no, no, no. It's one of six airfields you have, let me show you how precise I could be."
