Jonah Goldberg: Trump’s Red Line of Kids Suffering in Syria Is Not a ‘Super Coherent Strategy’

WALLACE: Jonah, I want to pick up on the president’s tweet, “mission accomplished,” and he responded today saying, I was talking in military terms, not political terms. He is political — he is the commander-in-chief, but, obviously, it does have a political resonance.

What is the mission and what did we accomplish?

JONAH GOLDBERG, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: I mean, I think it remains unclear. I thought your question to Nikki Haley — and I should fully disclose, my wife works for Nikki Haley — was interesting in the sense that she didn’t have a great answer to the question of, was it OK for Assad to slaughter civilians with conventional weapons but we’re going to step in with — if you use chemical weapons? Which I think is very small solace to the victims of Assad.

And I think in many ways that the mission here was in some ways defined by the fact that we had video. I mean, Nikki Haley at the U.N. said there had been 50 other chemical weapons uses, which we did not respond to. And I think that one of the things that Donald Trump has made clear is that when there’s video of kids suffering, he responds to that. That’s his red line.

I’m not sure that is a super coherent strategy going forward, because, first of all, let Assad continue to wipe out his domestic enemies and it doesn’t really change the status quo on the ground.

WALLACE: No, and she did not even commit that if there were other chemical weapons attacks that the U.S. would necessarily strike. She said it depends. So, it isn’t a red line when it comes to chemical weapons attacks. It comes to chemical weapons attacks that —

GOLDBERG: Have video attached. I think that might be the case.