In an image provided by the US Navy, a Tomahawk cruise missile is launched from the USS Ross in a strike against a Syrian air base Friday. (Robert S. Price/US Navy via The New York Times) — FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY —What a difference a week makes.
Last Monday, Donald Trump was the "America First" president. Before that, he was the guy who had campaigned on a pledge not to drag American into foreign fights. And before that, in 2013 he agreed with then-President Barack Obama who decided that the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad's step to finally "cross the red line" wasn't after all something the U.S. should use force to stop.
Last Monday, Trump's bumbling secretary of state and U.N. ambassador had signaled that the U.S. was no longer interested in encouraging an Assad regime change.
Then came Tuesday - the day camera crews found Syrian rebel toddlers convulsed and strangling from chemical weapons reportedly rained down on them from Assad. That same day, U.S. news agencies released Trump's latest poll numbers, collected in the days before: Quinnipiac found Trump - who has desperately been trying to draw attention away from the probes into his many cozy links to Russia - then had a measly 35 percent approval rating.
By Wednesday, Trump was upset about the "babies" - those same "beautiful little babies" of Syria and their battle-scarred parents who Trump has been determined to ban from entering the U.S. as refugees from a years-long war zone.
"My attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much," Trump said.
And by Thursday night, we were raining missiles on the Syrian airfield from which the planes laden with chemical weapons had reportedly taken flight. Our attack on the air field was "proportional," according to U.S. officials.
On Friday morning, Moscow denounced the missile strikes and froze a critical agreement on military cooperation with the U.S. in Syria, warning that our attack would further corrode already dismal relations between Moscow and Washington. Now what might that mean politically for cozy Trump/Russia probes? Is it just the kind of thing Trump needs to change the conversation?
The chemical attack - any chemical attack - is horrendous. So is war of any kind.
But let's be "proportional." Nearly 100 people were killed in Monday's chemical attack, including about 25 children. But over the six years of the Syrian civil war, a half million Syrian people - including tens of thousands of children - who feared the evil barbarism of the Russian-backed Assad have been killed by barrel bomb drops, starvation blockades and street fighting. Remember the boy rescued from the collapsed building in Aleppo? Remember the refugee toddler's body on the beach?
Where was Trump's concern for the babies when he babbled over and over again that Syrian refugees must be banned from travel? What's the difference, really, in watching them die from gas or leaving them to die - even turning them back to die? Is that difference found in just one week?
Canada took in 25,000 Syrian refugees last year, while America took a paltry 841 in the same period of time. Hillary Clinton said she would accept more, and was slammed on the campaign trail by Trump supporters - the same supporters who thrilled over Trump's pledges to ban all of the refugees - in reality, all immigrants.
In fairness, Trump did say his attitude changed and he is "flexible."
But saying that, and ordering the attack, are the easy parts.
Now comes the hard part: What we do next.
Can the voiceless Rex Tillerson play on Russian embarrassment that Assad again resorted to poison gas after Russia took responsibility in 2013 for seeing that he would not?
Can the Trump administration calm Iran, Assad's other major patron?
Can Trump bring himself to reopen the refugee door and use humanitarian aid to stop the desperation that leads to terrorism?
One of Trump's favorite phrases is, "We have no choice."
In this case, he's absolutely right. The missiles have flown, and now we've no choice now but to stay tuned to see what another week brings.