2017 Apr 8^th

I believe we are in very serious trouble as a result of President Trump’s military action against Syria. No, I don’t believe Iran or Russia will take any action to respond to what we did; the problem is with The Donald himself. Trump was, and Trump is, having problems with his presidency.

His much trumpeted health care replacement for the ACA was such a disaster that it had only a 17 percent public approval rating and was never even brought to a vote in the house. He was on his second effort to ban Muslims from entering the country and it was faring no better than his first effort. If the wall is built it is unlikely that Mexico will pay for it and his administration is days away (April 28^th) from a government shutdown unless they raise the debt ceiling. Jared Kushner, a liberal, and Steve Bannon, an alt-right conservative, are feuding right in front of him. Add to these problems an approval rating hovering just under 40 percent and you have a man always desperate for approval and applause getting little of either. He hasn’t even had time to schedule a “feel good” rally in one of the deep red states he won handily in the last election. Maybe he’s worried about the reception he’d get there now.

 But wait! The pictures of suffocating children in Syria has made him take some action. When an even worse event happened in 2013 he was completely unsympathetic, even urging President Obama to do nothing about it. This is different; this is 2017, in 2013 only about 35 percent of Americans thought we should take any action against Syria. In 2013 Russia agreed to oversee the removal of Syria’s stockpile of lethal gas so President Obama backed off from his “redline.” That removal wasn’t effective, so now in 2017 we still have the Syrian gas problem. (Of course the fact that about half million Syrians have been displaced by other means does not come up. Trump is only concerned about children dying if their deaths are caused by a gas attack not by barrel bombs or starvation.)

Now Trump has found relief. Two destroyers off the coast of Syria lobed a total of 59 Tomahawk missiles at the Syrian airfield used to launch the gas attack. The result hasn’t much damaged the airfield; it is even now being used to attack the same rebels who were attacked before. This attack has had other consequences: President Trump is suddenly a hero, he is the man of the hour in Europe and is even getting good press in Canada, His gaffes and his boorish sexual remarks are immediately forgotten by a now adoring press. His newfound popularity has cost him very little. Attack options were brought to him by competent military people and he picked one…and it worked and now he is a hero.

A long time ago, in 1905, a psychologist named E. L. Thorndike proposed what he called the Law of Effect. This law meant only that organisms tended to repeat in similar situations what had worked before. We deduce from this that when Trump is once again faced with the option of using military force or negotiating a settlement he will take the option that has boosted his approval rating; he will attack.

We have no idea where this new attack will be; perhaps there will be another Sarin gas attack and this time Russia will not be so accommodating, perhaps it will be North Korea, but with this easy success under his belt you can bet Trump will try for a repeat of this splendid ego boost. Where else does he have a sure-fire winner?