Let’s briefly review recent events in U. S. national security and foreign policy. According to public statements of former president Obama’s national security advisor, Susan Rice, President Trump and his aides have been under surveillance by order of Obama since before the 2016 election. Some of the gathered information was criminally leaked to the public, resulting in removal of General Michael Flynn as national security advisor. In came General H. R. McMaster, who appears to be taking neocon pills by the handful, as his replacement.

                                                                                                                     Did This Really Happen?

      Suddenly last week, within a day after the State Department reaffirmed U. S. policy as directed to defeating the terrorist group ISIS, not removing Bashar Assad as Syrian head of state, that policy began coming apart. First, Trump publicly denounced Assad as responsible for a chemical attack in Syria which killed civilians, including children. This the president did after reportedly hearing from his own highly respected new director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Michael Pompeo, that the chemical attack was falsely blamed on Assad by parties allied with ISIS, who actually perpetrated (or staged) the attack.

      Trump proceeded to order a cruise missile strike (59 missiles, but only 23 hit near the target) last Friday night against the Syrian air base from which the chemical attack was allegedly launched. Brief notice (one to two hours) was given to Russia and Syria that the base would be hit, but several casualties occurred. The attack was an act of war against a sovereign nation which had not attacked the U. S., and was not authorized by an Act of Congress as required by the Constitution.

      Thus, within a week’s time, President Trump relinquished his firm policy against foreign wars to impose regime change. In its place, he adopted something akin to what former president Obama wanted to do but didn’t because Congress wouldn’t authorize attacking Syria. Worse, after the State Department again affirmed the U. S. would not seek to depose Syrian president Assad, McMaster told a Sunday interview host that he thinks President Trump is receptive to a ground invasion of Syria. In this regard, other reports say 150,000 troops are presently assembled for the purpose in an adjoining country, with artillery support already in Syria!

      All this and we haven’t even mentioned North Korea yet. You remember – the country that was split in a cease-fire agreement 65 years ago, but now suddenly must be nuked immediately or we won’t be able to find our way to next week.

                                                                                                                         Time for Wise Counsel

      In an earlier century before natives of North America were called Indians, smoke signals would be seen asking the council of chiefs to reassemble. In today’s social media, tweets ask “WT_??!!” about President Trump’s apparent reversal of his fervent campaign pledge: no wars of aggression for regime change or nation building.

      Anyone who suggests that policy was not pivotal in his election win would be wrong – badly wrong. The president knows this as well as anyone. This was almost surely the pivotal issue between the time of the second debate – when HRC announced she would order the Pentagon to establish a no-fly zone over Syria – and election day. Many voters were moved to cast their vote because they want the endless wars ended now.

      If this is the case – that Trump knew the importance of this policy, but violated it anyway – then the present dilemma is all the more acute. Why did the president act as he did?

      Surely not merely because the new head of the National Security Council (H. R. McMaster) advised the attack on Syria as the necessary response to Assad’s use of poison gas against his own people. Any member of the MAGA movement could smell that advice as phony, even without assistance of “intelligence” operatives, as Trump himself has done in the past.

      Two potential explanations for Trump’s abrupt change of policy have emerged – more or less. One is that this is merely a head-fake ruse required of Trump by a grand design for a new alliance of major powers (the U. S., Russia and China) that will remove the ruling elite and achieve peace and prosperity among nations.

      A competing report is that the president is being blackmailed by threat of exposure of a video that would destroy his reputation and moral authority. The obvious flaw in this view is that his opponent in the recent election would have used such a video in an instant to defeat Trump, so who would have held it to this late date?

      A more straight-forward possibility is that powerful interests within the U. S. and its allies which have instigated and pressed the war against Syria during previous administrations have gained influence over President Trump. Vocal proponents of this imperial aggression stance are present in the old Republican Party – the names McCain and Graham are obvious examples – and at the head of the NSC thanks to the removal of Michael Flynn.

                                                                                                                                     Get It Together

      Those in the U. S. and elsewhere who have tried hard to start a much larger war since at least 2014 now have the bit in their teeth. They have set the stage for a variety of false flag attacks against America, to be blamed on one or more perceived enemies. To prevent them from getting us into wars which will keep him from his agenda to solve already monumental problems, President Trump must show his hand in convincing terms sooner rather than later. Otherwise, the wind at his back when he came into office may not be with him throughout his first year as president.