Take on Assad's motivation

I've been scratching my head all day to why Assad would do what he did this Tuesday.  I'm not naive enough to try to understand the moves of a tyrannical madman but I'd try to figure out why, at this point, he would decide to stir the pot

It comes down to the following four scenarios 

- Assad, after hearing Tillerson and Halley state that we would leave him to handle Syria, became emboldened and assuming Trump was a paper tiger, used chemical weapons

- Assad, with heavy urging of Putin, attacked his people to destabilize the region allowing Putin the opportunity for an even more heavy handed approach. 

-Assad, with the urging of Putin and the blessing of team Trump, attacked his people hoping to get a wag-the-dog scenario to give Trump cover on RussiaGate.  Putin went out and called it a near act of war and now both leaders can go back hime to show they stood up to their great adversary. 

- the world is an f'd up place and crazy people will do crazy things 

I'd guess you'd sort of root for scenario one because it's the least tinfoilhat-ish.  It does show Trump's own instability and lack of conviction in his own beliefs but also probably means that he has no follow up plan, let alone an exit strategy.  

What we did read was an article about how the true Alt-Right saw this as a betrayal.   InfoWars and its followers and bloggers were up in arms as it went against a core campaign promise.  But I have to see this as incredibly naïve as there was no way anybody could see Trump as a true isolationist ideologue, he was just willing to play one on TV.  

But what is even more shortsighted is to suggest that this would lead to a great exodus of Trump's core supporters, a theory which is just as naïve.  Trump supporters, in general, don't love him for his stances, even they realize it's all pie-in- the-sky nonsense without specifics.  They support Trump for the cult of personality, for their hope for him to clean house, break the system, drain the swamp.  

A congress which wouldn't give Obama the legal ability to do the same thing are now openly praising the bombing, as are Trump's supporters who would have killed Obama for the same.  Trump himself said we should stay out but now jumped in with two feet 

But his core supporters don't care about isolationism or nation building or whatever.  People root for the laundry.  The Steelers played a smash-mouth football style for years, now they play a high octane one, they didn't lose any fans and didn't win over any Ravens fans, either 

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