WORLD
Friday, April 7, 2017
East Oregonian
Page 11A
SYRIA: U.S. military officials informed Russian counterparts of the impending attack
Continued from 1A
Bashar Assad was responsible for
the chemical attack, which he said
employed banned gases and killed
dozens.
“Assad choked out the lives of
innocent men, women and chil-
dren,” Trumped declared.
The U.S. strikes hit the govern-
ment-controlled Shayrat air base in
central Syria, where U.S. officials
say the Syrian military planes
that dropped the chemicals had
taken off. The U.S. missiles hit
at 8:45 p.m. in Washington, 3:45
a.m. Friday morning in Syria. The
missiles targeted the base’s airstrips,
hangars, control tower and ammu-
nition areas, officials said.
Syrian state TV reported a U.S.
missile attack on a number of mili-
tary targets and called the attack an
“aggression.”
The surprise U.S. assault marked
a striking reversal for Trump, who
warned as a candidate against the
U.S. getting pulled into the Syrian
civil war, now in its seventh year.
But the president earlier in the week
appeared moved by the photos
of children killed in the chemical
attack, calling it a “disgrace to
humanity” that crossed “a lot of
lines.”
About 60 U.S. Tomahawk
missiles, fired from warships in the
Mediterranean Sea, targeted an air
base in retaliation for a chemical
weapons attack that American
officials believe Syrian government
aircraft launched with a nerve agent,
possibly sarin.
The president did not announce
the attacks in advance, though he
and other national security officials
ratcheted up their warnings to the
Syrian government throughout the
day Thursday.
“I think what happened in Syria
is one of the truly egregious crimes
and shouldn’t have happened and
it shouldn’t be allowed to happen,”
Trump told reporters traveling on
Air Force One to Florida, where he
was holding a two-day summit with
Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The strike came as Trump was
hosting Xi in meetings focused in
part on another pressing U.S. secu-
rity dilemma: North Korea’s nuclear
program. Trump’s actions in Syria
could signal to China that the new
president isn’t afraid of unilateral
military steps. even if key nations
like China are standing in the way.
Trump has advocated greater
counterterrorism cooperation with
Russia, Assad’s most powerful
military backer. Just last week, the
Trump administration signaled the
U.S. was no longer interested in
trying to push Assad from power
over his direction of a conflict that
has killed hundreds of thousands of
people and led to the worst refugee
crisis since World War II.
U.S. military officials sought
to portray the strikes as an appro-
priate, measured response. But the
assault still risks plunging America
into the middle of Syria’s conflict,
complicating the safety of the
hundreds of U.S. forces fighting
a separate campaign against the
Islamic State group in the north
of the country. If Assad’s military
persists in further gas attacks, the
Trump administration might logi-
cally pursue increased retaliation.
Russia and Iran, Assad’s allies,
pose other problems. Russian
military personnel and aircraft are
embedded with Syria’s, and Iranian
troops and paramilitary forces are
also on the ground helping Assad
fight the array of opposition groups
hoping to topple him.
Before the strikes, U.S. mili-
tary officials said they informed
their Russian counterparts of the
impending attack. The goal was
to avoid any accident involving
Russian forces.
Nevertheless, Russia’s Deputy
U.N.
ambassador
Vladimir
Safronkov warned that any nega-
tive consequences from the strikes
would be on the “shoulders of
those who initiated such a doubtful
and tragic enterprise.”
The U.S. also notified its partner
countries in the region prior to
launching the strikes.
Trump’s decision to attack Syria
came three-and-a-half years after
President Barack Obama threat-
ened Assad with military action
after an earlier chemical weapons
attack killed hundreds outside of
Damascus. Obama had declared the
use of such weapons a “red line.”
At the time, several American ships
in the Mediterranean were poised
to launch missiles, only for Obama
to abruptly pull back after key U.S.
ally Britain and the U.S. Congress
balked at his plan.
He opted instead for a Russian-
backed plan that was supposed
to remove and eliminate Syria’s
chemical weapons stockpiles.
Thursday night’s strikes were
launched from the USS Ross and
USS Porter and landed in the early
morning Friday in Syria.
The world learned of the chem-
ical attack earlier in the week in
footage that showed people dying
in the streets and bodies of children
stacked in piles. The international
outcry fueled an emotional response
from Trump, who appeared to
abandon his much-touted “America
First” vision for a stance of human-
itarian intervention, akin to that
of previous American leaders. “I
think what happened in Syria is
a disgrace to humanity,” he said
Thursday.
Trump seemed to rapidly recon-
sider his feelings about Assad,
saying: “He’s there and I guess
he’s running things, so something
should happen.”
Jessica A. Stewart/The St. Joseph News-Press via AP
United State Marine Corp Staff Sgt. Kevin Harmon,
left, and Pfc. David Aguirre raise the flag at Mount
Mora Cemetery Thursday in St. Joseph, Mo. They also
laid a wreath at the World War I memorial in honor of
the 100th anniversary of the United States entering
the first world war.
Thousands pause
for global WWI
centennial observance
Associated Press
KANSAS CITY, Mo.
— Awed by an eight-plane
flyover that left the sky
streaked with plumes of red,
white and blue contrails,
thousands paused Thursday
in the shadow of the nation’s
official World War I monu-
ment in remembrance of the
day a century ago that the
U.S. entered the fight.
Melding equal measures
of homage to American
sacrifice with patriotism,
the commemoration — “In
Sacrifice for Liberty and
Peace” — amounted to a
multimedia time warp to
April 6, 1917, when America
begrudgingly joined the
global conflict that President
Woodrow Wilson had sought
to avoid through neutrality.
With winds fluttering
flags amid temperatures in
the upper 40s, a few thousand
ticketholders and dozens
of foreign ambassadors
watched a color guard clad
as WWI-era “Doughboys”
present the colors.
Short films — one
narrated by Kevin Costner,
another by Gary Sinise —
displayed on twin screens 25
feet tall offered documenta-
ry-style flashbacks. Ragtime
music, military pomp and
recitations of writings of the
period filled voids between
speeches, many of them by
politicians.
Many who publicly spoke
offered a nod to American
sacrifice: By the time U.S.
troops helped vanquish
Germany and the conflict
ended in 1918, more than
9 million people were lost
to combat, some 116,000
of them Americans killed
in what turned out to be
a transformational war. A
conflict initially fought by
horseback in dank, muddy
trenches gave way to carnage
by armored vehicles, air
combat and German use of
mustard gas.
“America entered the war
to bring liberty, democracy
and peace to the world after
almost three years of unprec-
edented hardship, strife
and horror,” retired Army
Col. Robert Dalessandro,
chairman of the U.S. World
War I Centennial Commis-
sion, which hosted the event,
told the crowd. “We still live
in the long shadow of World
War I in every aspect of our
lives.”
Kansas City’s selection
“America
entered the war
to bring liberty,
democracy and
peace to the
world.”
— Robert Dalessandro,
Retired U.S. Army Colonel
as host of Thursday’s hours-
long affair was no accident,
given the hilltop setting’s
217-foot tall Liberty Memo-
rial tower and the sprawling
WWI museum below it.
The monument was built
after a burst of postwar
patriotism that over 10 days
in 1919 raised $2.5 million,
the equivalent to more than
$30 million today.
So noteworthy was the
achievement that Allied
commanders from Belgium,
Great Britain, Italy, France
and the U.S. gathered in 1921
to dedicate the site, across the
street from the Kansas City
train station that more than
half of U.S. troops passed
through before being shipped
overseas.
When the monument was
completed five years later,
more than 150,000 turned
out to hear President Calvin
Coolidge dedicate it. Cast
on Thursday by Mayor Sly
James — a former Marine
— as one of Kansas City’s
“crown jewels,” the site last
year drew 200,000 visitors
spanning more than 70 coun-
tries.
“For the past 91 years,
people from across the globe
have come to learn and
remember,” said the muse-
um’s CEO, Matt Naylor,
who displays in his office
the shaving kit his British
grandfather used as a WWI
infantryman in France.
Across the Atlantic on
Thursday, France staged its
own centennial observance.
French defense minister
Jean-Yves Le Drian urged
diplomats and veterans
at Paris’ U.S. embassy to
remember “the courage of
America and the millions of
soldiers that came to fight at
our side.”
Le Drian added that
French soldiers who attended
the Kansas City event
demonstrated that “our coun-
tries are coming together
around a common history.”
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