“Trump supports terrorism”? These protesters are aware of what I have pointed out here, that a weakening of the Assad regime redounds to the benefit only of the Islamic State and other Sunni jihad groups. On the other hand, these protesters were chanting “Death to America, death to Israel,” because the Assad regime is a client of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has made these chants the symbol and centerpiece of its foreign policy. There are simply no good guys in this conflict. The Trump administration has to decide which is the lesser evil: Assad, who is obscenely evil but has never threatened strikes in the U.S. or made any attempt to mount any, and who has protected Christians in Syria (who have been brutalized and murdered by jihad groups opposing Assad), but which is backed by Iran, whose leaders have repeatedly vowed to destroy U.S. power in the world, or the Islamic State, which is obscenely evil and has both threatened and carried out strikes in the U.S. Probably aiding neither side in any way would be the most prudent course.
“Hundreds in Syria capital protest US strike,” AFP, April 11, 2017:
Hundreds of Syrian students gathered on Tuesday outside the United Nations headquarters in Damascus to protest last week’s US strike on a government air base.
Demonstrators waved the two-star flag of the Syrian government and pictures of President Bashar al-Assad outside the UN’s office in the Mazzeh neighbourhood of the Syrian capital.
Their placards read “Iraq will not happen again, this is Assad’s Syria,” and “Trump supports terrorism.”
Some protesters chanted, “Death to America, death to Israel!”
US warships on Friday fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at a central Syrian air base from which Washington believes government jets launched a chemical attack that killed at least 87 civilians.
The Syrian government denied that it used toxic substances, saying it struck an arms depot used by militias and describing the US strike as “foolish and irresponsible behaviour”.
“We came to denounce the American strike,” said Ayyad Talab, head of the university students’ branch in the National Syrian Students Union (NSSU), which organised the protest.
“We want to say that we are ready to defend our country, armed with our work, our minds, and our ideas and with our souls if necessary,” he told AFP.
The NSSU submitted a letter, addressed to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, that the United Nations mission in Damascus said it would forward to his office.
“We came to condemn the American aggression on our country. We consider it a disgrace to the democracy that America claims,” protester Mahmoud Issa told AFP.
The US retaliatory strike marked the first time the United States has intervened directly in the Syrian war against Assad’s government….