REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
President Trump declared this week that the United States is not going to war in Syria, despite fears that last week’s aistrike may be the first salvo in an escalating conflict. “We are not going into Syria,” he definitively stated in a sit-down interview with Fox Business Network host Maria Bartiromo, set to air Wednesday morning. “But when I see people using horrible, horrible chemical weapons, which they agreed not to use under the Obama administration, but they violated it,” he continued. “Look, what I did should have been done with the Obama administration long before i did it. I think Syria would be a lot better off than it has been.” The remarks come as questions arise about the consistency in the Trump White House’s Syria strategy: at times officials have pointed towards military conflict; and at other moments they’ve suggested the Syrian people will figure out what to do with the Assad regime.