According to the information we now have, some 18 people were involved in making yesterday’s decision to carry out a missile strike against Syria. Seventeen were men. One, Dina Powell, Deputy National Security Adviser, was a woman.
The decision to carry out some sort of attack against the government of Bashar al-Assad has been widely praised, both at home and abroad. Moreover, a nearly all-male decision making group is hardly unusual at the highest reaches of government or, for that matter, at the highest reaches of business or anything else.
Still, when a leader is as fixated on the virtues of being manly as is Donald Trump, and when the matter at hand is violence, attention must be paid. Attention will be paid.
For now, suffice to say no surprise that the first thing that President Donald Trump did to receive plenty of plaudits was an act of war. The man and the moment met.