a long history of working, and they had accomplished their mission. and so what happened was the banner was interpreted as matching the words of president bush saying the mission of the war was over and accomplished and won. it was sort of a convoluted message. president trump, if he used the term mission accomplished, i think he meant that it was a successful mission, it was a coalition of the willing who believed that this regime in syria cannot continue to use chemical weapons. and it was a strong signal. they crossed the red line and he dealt with it and accomplished what he set out to do. ryan, paris points out that the president meant it when he said it. the question is is he aware of the connotation connected to the phrase. i think paris is right, the carrier in the bush situation had accomplished its limited, specific mission. of course it became a metaphor for the fact that iraq was a complete and utter disaster.
punish assad for using chemical weapons. it calls to mind something that president george w. bush later regretted, he said that it was one of the few regrets he had while president, standing there overstating the case that the war was over in may of 2003. my goodness. and that banner which will haunt the bush legacy for the rest of his life. it was really unwise for president trump to associate himself with that. paris, do you think the president stepped on his own message after the success of last night s strike? at the end of the day, the president feels that the execution of the air strikes in syria was a successful event and that the mission that he set out, the mission was accomplished with the coalition. there is a political message about what happened with president bush who i was proud to work for. the whole story of that issue was that the ship and the troops that were there on that ship had
her allies. that was a surprise although it had been telegraphed by donald trump since the tuesday before. sam kiley, appreciate it, from moscow. now, where the strike fits into a larger strategy for syria. cnn s fareed zakaria is the host of gps on sundays on cnn. fareed, mission accomplished is a phrase we re all used to, of course, for better or worse. was he right, was the mission accomplished? the mission by the administration was defined narrowly. they are careful about it, the president was careful about it. it s about chemical weapons, it s about making assad pay a price for the use of chemical weapons. and in that sense, the mission is accomplished. the message was sent. the punishment was inflicted, if you will. but the mission was not accomplished in a larger sense which is the syrian civil war continues. it continues to spiral out of control. and more importantly, assad continues to win.
broader policies for intervening and trying to alleviate some of the suffering. i don t think any of the choices are very good, but at the very least he would reconsider the refugee policy. i want to make one other point. if you listen to nikki haley today at the u.n., she didn t frame this as obama screwed this up and trump is making it all right. it was the opposite. she said in 2013, obama was going to go to attack, he then backed off, agreed to a russian plan to get all the chemical weapons plan out of the country. and what she argued was that trump in these attacks, both in april of 2017 and yesterday, was essentially enforcing that obama era agreement. assad said he would remove the chemical weapons and would never use them again, so it was proper for the united states to respond to that. thank you, appreciate it. up next, we ll focus more sharply on the syrian people. the war obviously continues, including the survivors of the attack last week. do they think last night s
use chemical weapons again, right? because the only goal here was to deter him from using chemical weapons. so we won t know if that mission is accomplished unless we see him not use them. paul, i mean, ryan brings up the difficulty, frankly, that the obama administration faced as well, which is, you know, u.s. really has no appetite to get involved in the war in syria, with the intrusion of troops on the ground, or even, it seems, regime change, no matter how many civilians or innocents are killed by the regime of bashar al assad, despite all the hundreds of thousands of people who have died over the last seven or so years. right, this is part of the legacy of the war in iraq. donald trump was bitter in his denunciation of that war and remains bitter in his denunciation of it. and so that s why the politics of this actually is not so much republican versus democrat as it is within the republican party. the trump republicans against the traditional republicans. donald trump in fron