APRIL 7, 2017 - WASHINGTON NOTEBOOK:
In the US, President Donald Trump has congratulated the American military for conducting Thursday night's air strikes on Syria.
The US claims the military action disabled the Syrian regime's ability to launch another chemical weapons strike from an airbase near Idlib.
But is also raised enormous questions about the future direction of President Trump's foreign and defence policy.
In his "Washington Notebook", our US Correspondent Simon Marks looks at the implications of the President's decision to launch Thursday night's missile strike.
IN: "And suddenly there…."
OUT: "…President really knows"
DUR: 3:50
GENERIC: http://www.fsnradionews.com/feeds/0408notebook-marks.mp3
And suddenly, there was confusion in the land.
Not a biblical quotation - at least, not that I know of - but a very real description of the consequences of President Trump's decision to launch air strikes on Syria.
Let's review.
For months….years, in fact….Donald Trump - then plain, old Donald Trump - has counseled AGAINST American military intervention in Syria.
For months….years, in fact….Syrian President Bashar al Assad has carried out atrocities against his own people.
And sometimes those atrocities have - as they did last Tuesday - left Syrian men, women, children and babies gasping on the ground for breath, before succumbing to a slow, gruesome death by asphyxiation.
The atrocity near Idlib was no different….it gave rise to yet another series of horrific images, widely shared on-air and on-line.
But what does appear to have been different this time around….is the fact that President Trump actually saw them.
A controversial headline in the New York Times claimed: "On Syria Attack, Trump's Heart Came First".
Well….maybe….but I suspect it was actually his eyes.
We cannot be sure of the sentimental condition of President Trump's heart, but we should remember this is a man who at one point urged President Obama to take all the money he was - at the time - planning to spend on a military strike on Damascus….and use it to rebuild Detroit instead.
Had he then actually witnessed the suffering of Syrian men, women, children and babies and decided to over-rule his heart?
Or - more likely - had he not spent much time watching images from Syria that - to be fair to the President - have rarely actually been screened on the cable news channels he prefers to watch?
Just one year ago, challenged over his position on closing America's borders to Syrian refugees, then candidate Trump said: "I CAN look in their faces and say 'You can't come'. I'll look them in the face".
Where was his heart then? And where is it now, as he continues to battle to close America's borders to those very same Syrian children in whose name he carried out Thursday night's attack?
Of one thing we can be absolutely sure: President Trump's action has stunned many of those people who voted for him because they believed him when he said he wouldn't waste time getting America entangled in far-off lands about which they cared little.
The so-called alt-right - the extreme nationalists who fueled the President's election victory - have taken to social media accusing him of betrayal.
And in the process often using the anti-Semitic slurs that are the common currency of their Twitter feeds.
Voters in the rust-belt, learning of the attack on Syria, could be excused for wondering how it might help the President deliver on his promise of "jobs, jobs, jobs"!
And the President's DETRACTORS are also reeling from his decision to lob 60 cruise missiles at a Syrian air base in the dead of night.
It becomes harder for them, now, to claim he's a puppet of the Kremlin when his military strike so evidently angered Vladimir Putin.
It becomes harder for dissident Republicans to slam President Trump for an absence of leadership on Syria when he's shown that - at least on this occasion - he was willing to become Action Man.
And it becomes harder…much harder….for Democrats who know that President Trump has given meaning to a red line drawn - but then ignored - by their man….former President Barack Obama.
And so - in the words of Genesis…the band, not the book… this is suddenly "the land of confusion".
Does it really signify a change-of-heart in the White House?
I'm not sure even the President really knows.
President & Chief Correspondent
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