Krauthammer says Trump admin invited Assad's 'arrogant aggression

Conservative Krauthammer listed off some of the other atrocious attacks that didn't move President Trump in an attempt to explain why he thought he was displaying foreign policy instability. He also said that the Trump administration invited the attacks a week ago by telling the world they no longer wanted to replace Assad.

He made the comments Thursday on Special Report on Fox News.

"Well the whipsaw here is quite remarkable." Krauthammer began. "Because it was only a few days ago that he said through his spokesman at the U.N. and also his Secretary of State that we were not continuing the Obama approach of wanting regime change. The official policy was, and this was just a few days ago, that the United States no longer was seeking the ouster of the regime. And now we have as an emotional response..."

"Let me interrupt you," Bret Baier interjected, "that was before a chemical weapons attack on civilians."

"I understand," Krauthammer responded, "but if you're going to announce a policy, and you revoke it three days later, because of the president's emotional reactions to pictures - remember, Assad has been killing people for seven years. The other thing is that in Iraq, Saddam had conducted campaigns of Sarin gas attacks, killing thousands of Kurds, and Trump has proudly announced that he was always against the war. If this a causus belli, if this is a reason for us to go to war, then why didn't it apply in Iraq, and why didn't it apply years ago when Obama was in power?"

"I'm not saying this is a mistake," he added, "I'm just saying that when a superpower changes its policy radically because a president is moved by pictures, you have to wonder about the stability of the foreign policy."

Krauthammer later explained what kind of attack he favored in order to "send a message that we are trying to enforce the norm against the use of chemical weapons."

"To announce it," he explained, "or to insinuate that it's the beginning of a campaign to bring the regime down is a mistake. I think the biggest mistake was announcing a weak ago that we were no longer interested in changing the regime. Why did we have to say anything?"

"I think that simply invited this kind of arrogant aggression on the part of Assad," he added, "in the same way that in 1950, our Secretary of State said that south of Korea was outside the zone of protection of the United States. And we got an invasion shortly afterwards. So the less you say, the more you do."

Trump has signaled that the pictures and videos of children caught in a gas attack in northeastern Syria has moved him to change his foreign policy stance on the regime change of Bashar al-Assad.