Donald Trump’s decision to bomb a Syrian airfield last week, days after a chemical weapons attack by its government, earned him the first broad bipartisan applause of his divisive presidency. Many Democrats, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, praised the missile strikes. “Donald Trump has done the right thing on Syria. Finally!!” exulted former Obama official Anne-Marie Slaughter, “After years of useless handwringing in the face of hideous atrocities.” The mainstream media was similarly enthusiastic. CNN’s Fareed Zakaria announced that Trump “became president” with the decision to strike Syria. “We see these beautiful pictures at night from the decks of these two U.S. Navy vessels in the eastern Mediterranean,” MSNBC host Brian Williams marveled. “I am tempted to quote the great Leonard Cohen: ‘I am guided by the beauty of our weapons.’”

But as a lesser number of politicians and pundits observed, bombing a single airfield does not a foreign policy make. If anything, Trump’s decision has only further confused observers, as it marks an abrupt shift from his oft-stated desire to avoid further entanglement in Syria and concentrate on fighting the Islamic State. That confusion apparently extends to key administration officials, who on Sunday presented differing positions on whether, and how, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad should be ousted.



“We know there’s not any sort of option where a political solution is going to happen with Assad at the head of the regime,” Nikki Haley, the ambassador to the United Nations, said on CNN’s State of the Union. “If you look at his actions, if you look at the situation, it’s going to be hard to see a government that’s peaceful and stable with Assad.” More forcefully, she added, “We don’t see a peaceful Syria with Assad in there.”

But Secretary of State Rex Tillerson delivered a different message that day. “Our priority is first the defeat of ISIS,” Tillerson told ABC’s This Week. “Once we can eliminate the battle against ISIS, conclude that, and it is going quite well, then we hope to turn our attention to cease-fire agreements between the regime and opposition forces.... In that regard, we are hopeful that we can work with Russia and use their influence to achieve areas of stabilization throughout Syria and create the conditions for a political process through Geneva in which we can engage all of the parties on the way forward, and it is through that political process that we believe the Syrian people will lawfully be able to decide the fate of Bashar al-Assad.”

National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster tried, implausibly, to argue that there was no inconsistency between Haley’s and Tillerson’s statements. “While people are really anxious to find inconsistencies in those statements, they are in fact very consistent in terms of what is the ultimate political objective in Syria,” McMaster argued on Fox News Sunday. He said Haley’s point was that “it’s very difficult to figure out how a political solution could result from the continuation of the Assad regime. We’re not saying that we are the ones who are going to effect that change.” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, citing Haley’s remark, had a different take: “So that means regime change is now the policy of the Trump administration. That’s at least what I’ve heard.”