"Donald Trump, who’s totally not Vladimir Putin’s puppet, warned Russia before airstrikes on Syria"
The author is aware that this was not intended to be the opening salvo of a war on Russia, right?
This cruise missile strike on Assad's air base was a belated defense of Obama's chemical weapons red line, if Salon can reach that far back in its memory.
And Salon realizes, as Instapundit noted, that if we hadn't warned the Russians despite the Obama era deconfliction process that the Russians would be justified in being angry if their troops died in our attack, right?
Pretty soon, Salon writers are going to complete their change and drone on about our precious bodily fluids.
Tip to Instapundit.
UPDATE: Wait. What? Nancy Pelosi wants a Congressional debate over the single strike mission?
“Congress must live up to its Constitutional responsibility to debate an Authorization of the Use of Military Force against a sovereign nation,” Pelosi wrote in the letter sent Friday morning. “The American people are owed a comprehensive strategy with clear objectives to keep our brave men and women in uniform safe and avoid collateral damage to innocent civilians in Syria.”
Just like Pelosi wanted a debate on the "time-limited, scope-limited military action" against Libya in 2011?
UPDATE: Russia suspended the deconfliction protocol:
Even as Russian officials expressed hope that the strike against Syrian President Bashad al-Assad’s forces would not lead to an irreversible breakdown in U.S. relations with Moscow, the Kremlin’s decision to suspend the 2015 memorandum of understanding on the air operations immediately raised tensions in the skies over Syria. ...
Later Friday, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that it has officially informed the United States that it is suspending its obligations under the memorandum at midnight.
Which means two things. One, Russia or Syria might accidentally drop bombs on American troops inside Syria. We'd best move around, dig in, and have air defenses handy.
And two, future American strikes on Assad's forces will have a greater chance of killing Russians, raising the stakes in punishing Assad and perhaps deterring more strikes--Salon fire-breathing passions to smite the Russians notwithstanding.
UPDATE: Never mind:
Russia has not suspended a military communications channel meant to help U.S. and Russian forces to avoid inadvertent clashes in Syria, despite a U.S. cruise missile strike on a Syrian airbase that has angered Moscow, senior U.S. officials said on Friday.
Perhaps Russia thought better of risking a US-Russian clash.
