Vice President Mike Pence today continued to play up the US hostility toward North Korea, saying the nation should view recent US strikes in Syria and Afghanistan as a warning to them not to question President Trump’s resolve and determination to act against North Korean “provocations.”
Other White House officials echoed this, saying that while President Trump wasn’t going to telegraph his attack by setting “red lines,” everyone has seen that his recent attacks in Syria prove that he can launch “decisive” attacks when he wants to.
This once again raises concerns that the US is likely to conduct an attack on North Korea, using its recent Tomahawk missile attacks against Syria, and the use of the “Mother of All Bombs” against a target in Afghanistan to underscore their willingness to aggress.
At the same time, it raises further concerns about whether President Trump had any sort of reason to carry out the attacks in the first place, or whether the Trump Administration carried out a high-profile attack on Syria, risking war with Russia, then used a previously undeployed type of bomb near villages in Afghanistan simply for the sake of “sending a message.”
This isn’t even particularly unlikely, as the Syria strike saw the US eagerly launching a quick attack over an alleged “gas attack” before an international investigation could take place, and the Afghan strike came totally out of the blue, bombing an area in Afghanistan which indeed has an ISIS presence, but which has had such a presence for many months.
