WASHINGTON: On the morning after, President Donald Trumplink>declared success.The surgical strike against chemical weapons facilities in Syrialink> had been executedperfectly, he said Saturday. “Mission Accomplished!” he wrote on Twitter.

That’s a phrase presidents and politicians have studiously avoided sincePresident George W. Bush’s ill-fated aircraft carrier visit prematurelydeclaring success in the Iraq War. But aside from the curious choice ofwords, it raised the essential question regarding Syria going beyond theone-time strike: What exactly is the mission?

For most of Trump’s presidency, it has been to defeat the Islamic Statelink> and then get out. But whatTrump outlined in his televised speech to the nation was something morecomplicated. He promised a sustained campaign to stop Syria’s governmentfrom again using chemical weapons on its own people, while also emphasizingthe limits of the United States’ ability or willingness to do more to stopthe broader bloodletting that has devastated that country for seven years.

Trump finds himself in a position not all that different from that of hispredecessor, President Barack Obama, and with no easier answers. The strikebrought home Trump’s competing impulses when it comes to Syria — on the onehand, his manful chest-thumping intended to demonstrate that he is thetoughest one on the international block, and on the other, his deepconviction that US involvement in the Middle East since the attacks ofSept. 11, 2001, has been a waste of blood and treasure.

He did little to reconcile those impulses with his retaliatory strike topunish the government of President Bashar Assadlink> for a suspectedchemical attack a week ago that killed dozens of people. But then again, hereflected the contradictions of a US public that is tired of trying tosolve other people’s problems in the Middle East yet recoils at thehaunting images of dead children choked by gas.

Veterans of Washington policymaking in the Middle East offered conditionalpraise for Trump’s restrained approach to the strike, if not necessarilyhis more bellicose rhetoric. In hitting three sites associated with Assad’schemical weapons capabilities, limiting it to a single night and conductingit in conjunction with Britain and France, they said it sent a messagewhile avoiding a deeper involvement and minimizing the risk of provokingSyria’s patrons, Russia and Iran, into retaliating themselves.

“However, I don’t think the strike clarifies US policy,” said MeghanO’Sullivan, who oversaw the Iraq War as Bush’s deputy national securityadviser. “In theory, there is not necessarily an inconsistency between atargeted, multilateral strike against chemical weapons sites and thewithdrawal of troops that have been fighting ISIS. But the strike doesreally call into question the wisdom of pulling back American forces now inhighlighting the question of what our objective really is in Syria.”

Others argued that the strike was a waste that accomplished little and, inthe process, exceeded the president’s authority as commander in chief sincehe did not obtain authorization from Congress first. Critics said that ifTrump was truly moved by humanitarian concern over the victims of lastweekend’s attack, he should reverse his policy of barring virtually any newSyrian refugees from the United States.

“The ongoing bloodshed and war crimes in Syria are a stark reminder thatSyrian civilians need our support now more than ever,” Noah Gottschalk ofOxfam America said in a statement. “Yet the Trump administration stilllacks a coherent strategy to actually bring an end to the conflict andinstead has sought to slash humanitarian aid and slam the door on Syrianrefugees.”

By most accounts, the strike essentially left in place the status quo onthe ground. It did little if anything to weaken Assad beyond any chemicalweapons stores it destroyed, leaving him to continue waging war on his ownpeople through conventional means. It did nothing to exact the “big price”Trump promised to impose on Russia and Iran for enabling Assad’s chemicalattacks.

Indeed, Trump has shown little interest in trying to steer Syria to aresolution of its civil war, eschewing the sort of Geneva diplomacy thatabsorbed Obama’s last secretary of state, John F. Kerry, to little apparenteffect. Trump sees Syria in two boxes — the fight against the IslamicState, in which he has declared near victory, and the multisided civil warthat he wants no part of, saying as he did just days ago, “Let the otherpeople take care of it now.”

But that is an artificial bifurcation in a country torn by violence on allsides. The civil war affects the ability of the Islamic State to operateand vice versa. Trump may have opted for the more cautious approach urgedby Defense Secretary Jim Mattis instead of a more crippling attack that mayhave been favored by his new national security adviser, John R. Bolton, buthe did not settle the larger question.

Asked before the missiles began flying to explain the United States’strategy in Syria, Heather Nauert, the State Department spokeswoman,demurred. “I’m not going to get ahead of the president,” she said.

Even when the president spoke later that night, he was somewhat vague indescribing his own strategy. While he said he was “prepared to sustain thisresponse until the Syrian regime stops its use of prohibited chemicalagents,” he did not explain what he meant or how far he was willing to gobeyond saying he would also use economic and diplomatic tools.

Colin H. Kahl, who was the national security adviser to former VicePresident Joe Biden link>,said Trump “wisely avoided hitting regime targets where there was asignificant risk of killing Russians,” but for that very reason did littlereal harm to Assad.

“Indeed, the relatively cautious nature of the strike signaled that we weredeterred from taking larger action, potentially undercutting the credibleUS threat of doing more down the line if the regime continues to usechemical weapons,” he said.

Fundamentally, these factors are not that different than they were duringObama’s presidency, but Trump often seems unaware of history, even recenthistory. His use of the phrase “mission accomplished” on Saturday, forexample, invited unwelcome comparisons to Bush’s experience. Bush appearedon the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln in May 2003 after US troopstoppled SaddamHussein link> in Iraqand declared the end of major combat operations. Behind him was a largebanner declaring “Mission Accomplished,” which White House aides later saidwas meant as a congratulations to the carrier crew returning home butbecame a metaphor for miscalculation as a virulent insurgency consumed Iraq.

“Um … I would have recommended ending this tweet with not those twowords,” Ari Fleischer, who was Bush’s White House press secretary at thetime, wrote on Twitter on Saturday. When Bush made his appearance in spring2003, he said, the words seemed fitting. “By the Fall,” he added, “the shotof Bush with the banner became a symbol of what went wrong.” – NYT