Barbara Plett Usher, State Department correspondent for the BBC, has a theory about who's really responsible for Tuesday's chemical attack in northwestern Syria, and it's not Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, but President Trump. Usher's Wednesday BBC article about the use of chemical weapons in the war-torn Middle Eastern nation points a finger at Donald Trump for not going to war with Syria in the first 100 days of his presidency, stating that Trump's "hands-off" approach to Assad emboldened the Syrian leader to use chemical agents against his own people.
BBC absolves Obama for failing to remove Assad
Usher, who referred to Trump's Syrian policy as "disgraceful", devoted several paragraphs directing praise toward former-President Obama's Syrian policy, however. Rather than point a finger of blame at Obama for his unwillingness to force regime change in Syria, Usher excused the former president by claiming that Obama's policy had "evolved" because of Russia's involvement in Syria.
Usher continued by explaining that Obama's Secretary of State, John Kerry, was merely facing reality by concentrating on "what he thought was achievable" which, according to Usher, was de-escalating the violence and "getting some sort of political process off the ground" in regards to Russia's involvement.
Usher's BBC piece noted that the removal of Assad by the Obama administration was a "non-starter" and not necessary for success in Syria.
"Donald Trump, on the other hand, has been ambivalent, very publicly washing his hands of the issue," wrote Usher in her Wednesday article. She then blasted Trump for stating that the U.S.
has bigger problems than Assad.
Obama administration declared Syria had no chemical weapons
At any rate, the fact remains that the Syrian Civil War has been raging since 2011, thereby giving the Obama administration over half a decade to take out Assad if they so desired.
In other words, Usher's theory that President Trump is to blame for Tuesday's chemical attack because he failed to take out Assad within the first months of his presidency is patently absurd-- especially since John Kerry announced in 2014 that no chemical weapons remained in Syria.
"We struck a deal where we got 100 percent of the chemical weapons out," then-Secretary of State John Kerry stated on NBC's "Meet the Press" in July of 2014. Kerry was referring to the 2013 deal between Russian and the U.S. in which Russia agreed to help destroy Assad's stockpile of chemical weapons.
Ahmet Üzümcü, director of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, also went on record stating that Syria's entire chemical weapon stockpile had been confiscated. "The last of the remaining chemicals identified for removal from Syria were loaded this afternoon aboard the Danish ship Ark Futura," declared Üzümcü in June of 2014.
