much. at the close of the gulf war, general sworz could have gave the iraqis permission to fly helicopters agreeing to that concession was something that saddam used to quell the of th uprising of the country. we are focused on chemical weapons because they are awful. that said, assad is killing his people left and right. i don t think that has changed. i don t know that the russians are going to stop backing us or the iranians. i don t see the civil war changed much. one last thing to touch on what ben was saying, are we always going to look to the military to solve problems? less than 1% of the country wears a uniform. it s an easy band aid solution. we don t have a secretary of state. we should be looking at long term solutions that don t always look at the military. we have been at war since 2001.
is often criticized nato and america s european allies now acting in the more traditional role of an american president as the moral leader of the west. in this case, lining up against syria, against iran, and against russia. and the president, as you mentioned, declared mission accomplished on twitter following last night s strikes. what s interesting is that top administration officials are rallying behind the president on that. oftentimes they don t say much about his tweets. but senior administration official are making the argument that the u.s.-led coalition strikes in syria were designed to deter assad s regime from launching further chemical attacks all without collapsing his unstable government and drawing the u.s. into what has been a lengthy civil war. it s a complicated pursuit as you have been reporting all afternoon. the focus on deterrence is one reason why we heard nikki hayley the u.s. ambassador to the united nations saying that the u.s. is locked and loaded to
syria. he at the end of the day you need a diplomatic process to figure out what is going to happen in syria. i think it should be partitioned. when you are talking about partitioning or removal of assad or any kind of democratic transition with the opposition, at the end of the day you are talking about a democratic sorry, a diplomatic process. but the thing is, when you have leaders going in there to negotiate in a diplomatic process if you don t have your military hyped and you the threat of force then you have absolutely no leverage when it comes to the game on the ground in syria. i want to ask you about the message the made to is putting out there. of course the president spoke last night. mike pence, the vice president had this to say about the rationale behind the strikes and what happens next from lima, peru. this was the morally right act to take. the syrian regime and its bay trons know there will be a price
both the u.s. and russia i think keen to avoid confrontation. but these air strikes do not amount to a strategy. for president trump, now that s what he has got to think about. does he keep the 2,000 american troops in the east of syria? and what does he do next exactly if dash ar al assad should use chemical weapons once again. bill neely in beruit. bill thank you very much. mission accomplished. that is that president trump delivered a after those u.s.-led strikes. how high is the risk of retaliation and escalation. with the kremlin warned there would be consequences saying the strikes were an act of aggression. can we see aggression behind russia s public condemnation or is this the extent of the war of words. joining me, kevin. let me get your reaction to the strikes esaw in the morning hours in syria. more than 105 tomahawk ifls in.
wins like getting the investigative teams at the united nations. trying to go to the conferences at the opposite, seeing if we could beef them up but not a lot moved on from there. when you are talking about now, secretary tillerson delivered a speech in stan forward. forceful speech. it details five end game scenarios for syria. including the end of isis, counter-terrorism, moving having assad step aside, i should have said removal of assad. it detailed these end scenarios all that were based on preventing iranian prevention in syria. that speech didn t focus so much on russia. i think it may have mentioned russia but not really as a central focus. and that s very it shows. i mean it s demonstrative of where the administration is coming at this from. a counter-factual to close. ambassador wendy sherman was on and talked about the deal she helped negotiate with russia to get chemical weapons out of syria. looking back on that, what went