that wraps it up for us this hour. stay with us for updates and breaking news. all in with chris hayes is next. have a fantastic night, everybody. >> tonight on "all in." >> as you know, i would love to have never been in the middle east. >> the trump transformation. >> tonight i ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in syria. >> the fallout from last night's middle east military intervention and what the president's sudden change means going forward. >> all i can say about this president, he has the instinct of ronald reagan in many ways. >> plus, new questions about the long-term effects of last night's strike as the humanitarian crisis continues. >> we cannot in one breath speak of protecting syrian babies and in the next close america's

doors to them. >> then, are bannon and priebus getting reassigned? >> i think the biggest misconception is everything you're reading. >> more focus on the feuding as the reported breitbart reporter is overruled on syria when "all in" starts right now. good evening from new york. i'm chris hayes, as the world continues to assess the fallout, president trump woke up today to a chorus of praise from much of the foreign policy establishment, television pundits and many members of congress, at least one of whom is now comparing trump to the most beloved republican president in the modern era. >> all i can say about this president, he has the instinct of ronald regan in many ways. he's an emotional man but he's also a very smart man. i think he feels that he did the right thing by those children.

>> my reaction is strong message and i think a message of new sheriff in town. >> so i very much approve of what the president did. i think it was not only an important message to assad but to everybody else who may be wondering just what this new administration is going to be like. >> i have a nice conversation with the president last night and told him i was really proud of our nation and thanked him for taking the steps that he had taken. so i was very happy that he had done it. told him that. and told him i was very proud of him also. >> critics of the president are marking his intervention in syria as a reversal and in many ways it is a striking one. as recently as a week ago they were saying bashar al assad was not the united states' problem and throughout the campaign trump was pushing the isolationist vision he pushed in stark contrast to hillary clinton. >> now she wants to start a shooting war in syria in conflict with a nuclear armed

russia that could very well lead to world war 3. >> back in 2013 trump was tweeting things like this. to our very foolish leader, do not attack syria. if you do, many very bad things will happen and from that fight the u.s. gets nothing. in fact, as recently as tuesday trump was explicitly saying the rest of the world needs to fend for itself. >> i'm not and i don't want to be the president of the world. i'm the president of the united states, and from now on it's going to be america first. >> that was then. now a pro trump super pac is fundraising off the president's international military intervention, the missile launch. on one level it seems to reflect a serious change. at least some of trump's base is furious about the strikes and is jumping off the trump train. at another level trump's decision is perfectly consistent with everything we know about him.

one thing that became extremely clear during the campaign is that the president doesn't really have much in the way of core beliefs and that's particularly true when it comes to the middle east. >> it's about judgment. i didn't want to go into iraq and i fought it. >> are you for invading iraq? >> yeah, i guess so. you know, i wish it was -- i wish the first time it was done correctly. >> that was trump on iraq. here he is on libya. >> gadhafi in libya is killing thousands of people. nobody knows how bad it is. now we should go in. we should stop this guy, which would be very easy and very quick. we could do it surgically. stop him from doing it and save these lives. >> he said he was in favor of libya. i never discussed that subject. i was in favor of lib gentleman? we would be so much better off if gadhafi were in charge right now. >> what's constant about donald trump and has been since the beginning is that he is very,

very easily swayed by whatever the conventional wisdom of the pundant class is at the time. the same conventional wisdom he is now watching on the cable news broadcasts that he monitors so religiously. now after launching 59 cruz missiles in syria trump is being praised for being decisive and showing strength. what lesson do you think he's going to learn? joining me reuben galleigo. congressman, you put out a very strong statement in opposition to last night's strikes. explain your reason. >> well, i just don't think they were appropriate at the right time. look, what happened was horrible and there's no doubt that the assad regime was responsible for this and to an extent allies iran and russia. we could have done a lot of things before we went to strikes. we should have gone to the international community, try to increase sanctions on assad and russia and try to really push this to the extreme and then if and when there was no other

measures left, then we could have considered doing this. now i don't know what's going to happen. i don't know what the end goal is. i don't know what the result is. i don't know what the strategic next step is going to be. what happens if this gets to a level where it gets escalated where syria starts attacking our troops that are already in -- operating right now with some of our rebel allies. this can actually get pretty quickly out of hand and at least trump owes congress about what is the plan here. >> i wonder if you have a feeling about where the legal authority for this -- >> hello? >> can you hear me, congressman? hello? appears we have lost the congressman. let's try to get him back. i would like to continue talking to him. joining me brian darling and msnbc political correspondent richard stengel. let me start with you because it's been really striking to me, john kerry coming out forcefully with this. legions of ex-obama officials

rushing to praise this. and it reminded me this phrase that ben rhodes used called the blob. his and the president's view that there is a permanent foreign policy establishment that always likes escalation and intervention and that it was the job of the president to put the brakes on them. what do you think about that? >> i think ben is -- that's a correct observation, but speaking of secretary kerry, i saw secretary kerry work his heart and soul out to try to get a stalemate, a piece agreement in syria. it was frustrating. nothing happened. we didn't get leverage. we weren't able to avert. something needed to be done to change the equation in the middle east, and let's -- regardless of president trump's motives now, the fact that it -- that it changes the stakes a little bit, that it gives some warning to iran and russia that our sunni allies see an empowered u.s., i saw how disappointed they were in 2013 when we did not bomb after the

red line. they are now feeling like we are back in the game. >> brian, i want to ask you that. you just enunciated the most terrible phrase, something needed to be done. something needed to be done, something ergo something needed to be done. that's precisely the impulse that i think the foreign policy establishment bipartisan tends to share. it's precisely the thing that rhodes was talking about when he talked about the blob. >> but, again -- >> we're always doing something. we've been behind the middle east since 1991. >> ben was explaining the fact that the president didn't bomb after he said he would. >> right. >> there were many people in the administration, including my boss, secretary kerry said he did. he has a lovely explanation. we shouldn't just attack people to maintain our credibility but in fact credibility does matter in the international sphere. >> brian, i want you to respond to, there was this sort of up surge of a kind of foreign policy vision among republicans back in 2013 since rick is

talking about that, back when john kerry was pushing this very hard and when the president decided to go back to congress. listen to jason chafitz explanation. >> this is a civil war and i just don't know that the injection of the united states military, the greatest military on the face of the planet is, a, going to solve the problem and, b, not going to lead to something much bigger, more problematic. i see long-term ramifications by injecting ourselves into a civil war where the consequences may be something we really don't like. it would be terribly naive to think we could simply send a tomahawk missile in. i think if the united states gets involved, it's going to go on for a long time. >> last night he was tweeting u.s.a. and that is -- he is one

of many who have moved from that position. how do you explain that? >> i agree with the 2013 jason chaffitz. 2013 donald trump said you need to get congressional authorization before going to war. much like barack obama did the same thing when he was running for office, he said that you needed to get congressional authorization before instigating a war, an act of war or going to -- initiating military hostilities. i mean, both parties have been hypocrites on this issue. i look back to barack obama's presidency as a great disappointment. progressives are upset. he promised to get all troops and end the war in afghanistan. he promised so many things. we still have two aumfs that this administration is using to be in syria and iraq. >> you talk about aumf. there is a real question of legality. i saw john mccain, someone, i think it was john mccain said the 2001 aumf covers the strikes

against assad. >> that's how the obama administration interpreted it also. >> against assad? >> basically anything that we were going to do, we were using that aumf to justify those actions. >> but just to be clear, that aumf was drafted and passed after we were struck by al qaeda and 9/11 for associated forces. >> subsequent legislation people were using that as the figure leaf. >> i'm glad you used that phrase. >> you like my phrase? >> assad is literally bombing al qaeda. do we have the congressman back? >> i'm here. >> oh, great. so i want to ask you this question about authorization. i mean, what do you think of the idea that -- and you served i believe in iraq and you're a veteran yourself. what do you think about the need for authorization of some kind? what do you think that the 2001 aumf would cover airstrikes against assad? >> certainly not against assad.

i do believe that there is enough connection between isis and al qaeda, mesotabian al qaeda that i fought that justifies it. if you're going after assad -- the assad regime, hezbollah or any of its allies, you need to come back to congress. there is no nexus there. it makes very little sense. we need to know what the plan is. we need to know where this is going before this truly escalates to the point beyond the control of where any of us want to go. >> the point the congressman made there about associated forces is that. isis is a plausible way of interpreting associated forces there with assad it's -- >> very difficult. >> yeah. >> what do you think about the sort of -- the kind of next step idea, right? particularly the sort of ways in which -- i'm really curious as someone who was outside the state department came into it. the ways in which becoming president and being part of the sort of institutional decision-making structure for

the most powerful nation on earth changes your calculus. >> well, i mean, part of it is you get mugged by reality in terms of what happens out there. i do think the process of how that works, we've heard about that, the dcpc process actually doesn't get you to the best decisions. i suspect that president obama thought that as well. he approached it from a very small conservative idea which is will me doing something make this situation worse? and in the case of syria, which is incredibly complex, he always came out on the side, yes, it's going to make things worse and, indeed, it might. that is the problem. and as you say, we do not have a plan b right now. there is no plan for regime change. the vacuum has attracted the worst most awful terrorist groups in there. we don't have the moderate opposition anymore. there are not a lot of good choices. >> don't seem to have a plan a. >> right. >> i mean, you look at what's -- what we're looking at, i mean, when you look at these military

situations, you need a military plan, you need a goal, and you need an exit strategy, and it doesn't appear that we have any of those lined up. everybody is engaging in some feel good politics. yes, we have the strike. if it's successful the american people will probably be applauding the president for it, but ultimately if this starts a long-term engagement in syria, the american people aren't going to like it. they don't like the fact that we still have troops in afghanistan, troops in iraq. it's unbelievable and it's -- it's something that the war weary american public don't like. >> that -- brian's point there, congressman, what do you think of that, particularly in terms of what your constituents want to see and what you're going to say to them when you go home for recess? you're probably home now, i would imagine, about what your task as their representative is in guiding this policy going forward? >> look, my constituents were obviously horrified by the attack that occurred by the assad regime on these innocent children and families. at the same time, they're weary of war. they saw what the mistakes that happened that got us into the iraq war and i think they don't want to see us trip ourselves into another quagmire. right now we are bombing both the people that are fighting

assad and we're bombing assad who are bombing some of the people that we're supporting. where does this go? how does it all end? there are too many sides that are going to end? why did we bomb? they were still launching attacks on rebel held areas so it wasn't a military strategic reason why we hit it. it was a symbolic reason. if that was the case, why don't we go through diplomatic channels first. after exhausting those then go to a military option. one of my fears trump when given the military option will always take that first and i don't think that's responsible leadership. diplomacy requires all levels of tools. you're not looking at the world as an answer to everything is to bomb it. >> congressman, rick, thank you all. still to come, first he was irked by the bannon president portrayal and the president wasn't happy about how much attention jared kushner got and the white house in fighting. and the strike was in

america's vital national security interests. after last night the fight against the islamic state just got harder. he'll tell us why after this two-minute break. i will turn this car around right now! there's nobody back there. i was becoming my father. [ clears throat ] it's...been an adjustment, but we're making it work. you know, progressive.com makes it easy for us to get the right home insurance. [ snoring ] progressive can't protect you from becoming your parents, but we can protect your home and auto. [ chuckles ] all right. mait's a series ofar is nosmart choices. like using glucerna to replace one meal or snack a day. glucerna products have up to 15 grams of protein to help manage hunger and carbsteady, unique blends of slow release carbs to help minimize blood sugar spikes. every meal every craving. it's the choices you make when managing blood sugar that are the real victories.

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this is russian military promised to bulk up the air systems in syria and sent cruise missiles into the eastern mediterranean. russia says it is suspending the decould not flicks line, that helps pilots avoid collisions over syria. u.s. officials used it last night to warn russia of the imhe said thatting strike giving them time to evacuate. today they said they were shutting it down at midnight russian time.

they served as deputy assistant secretary. his latest piece on the syrian air strikes is tied, the fight against the islamic state just got harder. it seems there are two ways the russians can respond here. okay. we see what you did. carry on. withdraw our cooperation. >> it's going to be more towards the former. there could be a little of the latter as well. one of the things we don't appreciate, continuing department of defense appreciates this. and this was brees to president trump as well. the past two years, we've been flying in and around one of the more sophisticated air defense systems anywhere in the world. the u.s. jets in it take off and

in jordan. they're flying right into deranged fans of some of these complicated syrian defense systems. if, for example, the syrians decided to start turning these on and start tracking u.s. air craft, that could affect the flight paths, it could affect some of the operations in raqqa, for example. it could make our allies nervous. one of the reasons we set up the deconfliction after the russians beefed up their intervention in 2015 is because we started seeing irresponsible behavior on the part of the russians and syria in terms of trailing u.s. air craft, in terms of getting too close to aircraft. we didn't want our planes to run into each other over syrian skies. that's in russia's interest as well as ours. the announcement by russia was somewhat petulant. we'll see if they follow

through. >> someone was pointing out the fact that there's this sort of open door to escalation. there's also the idea of just essentially this was understood and intended to be understood as fundamentally symbolic and there's precedent to say israel has had several strikes over the last six years where they've gone and struck assad, come back out, have not been embroiled in a larger sustained military activity inside the country. how possible is that? >> yeah, that's right. that's exactly right. so israel's been very clear, at least starting privately and then publicly, about what their red lines are in terms of the transfer of advanced weapons systems and to hezbollah in lebanon and they seem to have, you know, without getting into the details, they seem to have taken action in some examples to counter act the movement of those weapons systems. the united states could do that and i think one of the ways in

which this is framed is, hey, this is a one off. we're not changing our policy. i actually think that might be a bit of a missed opportunity. to go back to the earlier conversation that your guests were having i think there is some truth to what rick stengel was saying, that if you wanted to use this to jump start a broader diplomatic effort, then you could frame it in terms of, well, hey, maybe we will strike again and leave that strategic ambiguity because certainly during the last few years of the obama administration we just didn't have a lot of sticks on the table when it came to talking to the russians or the syrians because force had been taken off the table. i'm not saying a broader campaign would be wise and there were many very good reasons why president obama rejected doing exactly what president trump did, but i will say that it could be useful from a diplomatic perspective, and that's something you've heard several obama -- former obama administration officials say today. >> andrew exum, always a pleasure to talk to you. thank you.

>> sure thing. still to come, white house struggle between steve bannon and jared kushner. why one of them is reportedly getting side lined ahead. but then i realized there was. so, i finally broke the silence with my doctor about what i was experiencing. he said humira is for people like me who have tried other medications but still experience the symptoms of moderate to severe crohn's disease. in clinical studies, the majority of patients on humira saw significant symptom relief. and many achieved remission. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you've been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you've had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don't start humira if you have an infection. if you're still just managing your symptoms,

talk with your gastroenterologist about humira. with humira, remission is possible. missile strike on syria has not pleased the altright, ann colter. richard spencer who called it the trump betrayal and tweeted stand with assad. then there's the exbreitbart publisher steve bannon who argued against the strike because it didn't advance trump's america first doctrine. america first lost out according to sources close to bannon. also been a huge amount of reporting about a brutal civil war in the white house more broadly.

it looks like the family members are winning and that change is on the way. wall street journal reporting today president donald trump is considering a major shakeup of senior white house team. according to a senior administration official. mr. trump is unhappy with the in fighting among his top advisors and is determined to see it end. the president is reportedly thinking of replacing reince priebus. he's trying out different names with his friends. he started asking friends to rate the performance of his top aides, following the failure in march to pass a health care bill through the republican house of representatives. the president may remove steve bannon. katie tur treated today. source close to bannon said things are very bad for bannon. today the white house pushed back calling it completely false. no one can deny from bannon being pulled from a permanent seat to the national security council. the white house power shift next.

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well, the apparent tug of war between steve bannon and president trump's son-in-law jared kushner would appear to favor kushner, sometimes it might be hard to tell. the president has privately scorned the coverage of mr. kushner's trip to iraq and questioned the need of the son-in-law's newly created office. at other points he's been dismissive of mr. bannon telling him he's not needed for this and that.

shannon, i feel like i never know how to make of all of this. the leaks are so constant, so contradictory. everything is clearly being done by someone with an agenda. you cover it full time. what do you make of it all? >> i don't know if i can give you the answers. i can tell you my colleagues and i today, we probably talked to a dozen different people close to the president, all different levels of the administration and we probably got a dozen different story lines about who's in, who's out, what's going on. you know, the different rivalries. part of it is these alliances that have been going on since the early days of the administration. i think part of it may be people wanting to hear a story line that they want to hear. people who don't like reince hearing that he's out and people who don't like bannon hearing that he's out. part of it might be the

president himself doesn't know what he wants to do. he doesn't like the direction some things are going in and doesn't know what he's going to do about it. >> to me, michelle, this is the key. every single white house has this. every single campaign has factions and fights. >> right. >> what to me makes this different is that the person at the center of it is essentially an empty vessel. >> right. >> so the battle seems much higher stakes. honestly it seems like you could convince donald trump to do everything from single payer to destroy the obamacare exchanges depending who's closer to him. >> right. the other thing is he has two very contradictory impulses. on the one hand he has this racist authoritarian old right side and on the other he has this kind of desperate plaintiff desire for mainstream approval. so you have these two factions. >> he wants vanity fair and "the new york times" to think highly of him. >> right. which will never happen as long as he's listening to steve bannon and so, you know, both of these -- so these two figures or these two factions play into

conflicting and completely contradictory desires that he has. one one ultimately prevails assuming one ultimately prevails is going to have a big impact on the future of this presidency. and -- >> and the nation and the world. >> right. the idea two years ago the idea of jared kushner running the country would have seemed like an apocalyptic nightmare. he was famous for running the fifth largest newspaper in new york city badly. having him instead of steve bannon. >> breitbart publisher. >> would feel like a form of deliverance. >> it does seem to me, shannon, it does seem to me as if there are signs of bannons waning influence that are tangible. what happened this week was a real thing. people around bannon are tempted

to spin it into a sort of hilariously transparent fashion. >> yeah. i mean, i think the things that i -- i do feel confident about now is that the power dynamics have changed from where they were early on in this administration and part of that is because, listen, in the early days of the white house it was like "home alone." they had no cabinet secretaries. it was bannon, priebus. now we have cabinet secretaries. we have gary cohen, the head of the n.e.c. we have dena powell who's now taking on a foreign policy and security role. so to some extent, yes, the power that rested in bannon and priebus at one point in the early days is not what it used to be because there are a lot more people who have been taking some of the influence. >> that's a great point. in terms of the fundamental dynamic, the gary cohn's are the jared kushner "new york times" world and not the breitbart world. the photo they put out of the briefing that happened at the mar-a-lago skiff of the syria strike which -- >> right. >> -- that's a whole other

situation, you know, gary cohen's in there. wilbur ross, the commerce secretary is in there, dena powell is in there. it gives you a little sense of what shannon's point is of the expanding influence centers. >> right. again, in any other administration it would not be a source of comfort that, you know, kind of a bunch of goldman sachs plutocrats are running the thing but i would say the amoral gain seeking plutocracy is the best case scenario for this administration when the alternative was kind of fascist nihilism. >> i would also say, shannon, that having -- my wife worked in the white house back in the early years of the obama administration. one thing that was clear that i always remember, white houses are strange places. it helps to have had people who have worked in a white house before. it was frustrating to watch clinton world folks come in because they had that experience but it turned out that it's a bizarre enter price which works. people say, we've done this before, we know how this works. there's essentially none of that in the white house. >> that's led to some of these early stumbles and struggles. there are people now in that

white house, dena powell is one of them who do have experience in past white houses, people on the economic side that have experience. this is trump's white house and it's never going to be the bush administration, it's never going to be the clinton administration or the obama administration. it's going to be trump's white house. he's going to do it the way he wants to do it. if he feels comfortable with gary cohen and he trusts him, he's going to be in the room. that's the way we're seeing things shape out here. >> or if he wants his son-in-law to run the entire western world, he might do that. shannon and michelle, thank you. still to come, hillary clinton addresses the military strikes in syria. why she says they're at odds with the president's other prominent discussions. plus those pesky jobs is the thing one and thing two right after the break.

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before we look at those numbers let's remember how the white house responded to the february report. the president retweeting a drudge headline great again. 235,000 jobs. reince priebus claiming trump delivers. sean spicer striking the football with not a bad way to start day 50. boasting of job creation which brings up the second full jobs report of the trump presidency and it wasn't good. >> why should i not be critical of president trump when we've got this weak jobs report from last month? >> thanks very much for having me. >> the white house is responding to this job report in thing two in 60 seconds. my doctor said moving more helps ease fibromyalgia pain. he also prescribed lyrica. fibromyalgia is thought to be the result of overactive nerves.

lyrica is believed to calm these nerves. for some, lyrica can significantly relieve fibromyalgia pain and improve function, so i feel better. lyrica may cause serious allergic reactions or suicidal thoughts or actions. tell your doctor right away if you have these, new or worsening depression, or unusual changes in mood or behavior. or swelling, trouble breathing, rash, hives, blisters, muscle pain with fever, tired feeling, or blurry vision. common side effects are dizziness, sleepiness, weight gain and swelling of hands, legs and feet. don't drink alcohol while taking lyrica. don't drive or use machinery until you know how lyrica affects you. those who have had a drug or alcohol problem may be more likely to misuse lyrica. with less pain, i can be more active. ask your doctor about lyrica. 98,000. march non-pharm payroll increased by 98,000 jobs. the unemployment dipped to 4.5%. >> disappointing report at 98,000 on the low end of

expectations. this is well short of what we should have seen. >> granted this isn't good, the markets bear that out. >> i can say that i did expect this number to be much stronger today. i'm surprised it's low. >> analysts expected 180,000 new jobs to be created they got just 98,000. while the jobless rate ticked down. the job creation is down the past two months lowering those reports by 40,000 jobs. you may recall candidate trump used to react to good employment numbers with conspiracy theories. >> don't believe those phony numbers when you hear 4.9 and 5% unemployment. the number's probably 28, 29, as high as 35. in fact, i even heard recently 42%. >> today the white house didn't even bother releasing an official statement. they directed us to the comments made by chief executive advisor that he was pretty pleased. a far cry from last month's giddiness when sean spicer

retracted the president's claims of phony numbers. >> does the president believe that this jobs report was accurate? >> yeah, i talked to the president prior to this and he said to quote him very clearly, they may have been phony in the past but it's very real now.

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i hope this administration will move forward in a way that is both strategic and consistent with our values and i also hope that they will recognize that we cannot in one breath speak of protecting syrian babies and in the next close america's doors to them. >> hillary clinton at an event in houston. she referenced his proposed travel ban to ban all refugees. joining us is a.m. joy and mika zenko who's the senior fellow at the council on foreign

relations. let me start with you. you have written a lot about this. what is your interpretation of the sort of humanitarian justification for what we did? it is so striking for me how much we talk about humanitarian war reasons going back to the reentrance into iraq because the yazidis were stuck and now we've got 5,000 troops in iraq. what do you make of this? >> every president when they go to war provide a buffet of justification objectives. most are articulated with such lack of specificity that you cannot validate whether they succeeded. humanitarian reasons are the most motive. what should you care about and what should americans care about. that ropes in the most domestic political audience. the problem in the case of the strikes last night in syria, they don't have a humanitarian impulse. they're intended to punish the assad regime and one particular

abandoned airfield in order to demonstrate resolve and credibility which are amorphous concepts. >> joy, it's interesting to watch the obama world folks here because one of the things that i'm seeing is the degree to which the president stood apart from a lot of people around him. >> yeah. >> because a lot of the people around him are out there praising this and if you recognize the degree to which the impulses of the foreign policy establishment were tugging on him in certain ways that he was quite intentionally pushing against. >> yeah. it is very difficult for any president of the united states to avoid getting involved in a war for precisely those reasons because there are always people around the president who feel that the answer to whatever crisis of the moment is taking place is to launch some sort of military strike, whether it's to punish someone like bashar al assad, to change their behavior, to send a message, to show the resolve and strength of the united states. >> sometimes it's self-justification of credibility. >> sure.

>> you've said you've done it so now you must. >> the one thing that is true and the military will tell you is absolutely true, you cannot undo or prevent the behavior of killing your own civilians with a strike like this? because, number one, it didn't even take out the air force that did the strikes. it didn't take out the chemical munitions. all it did was to send a message. that's the only just if i case that's logical for why they did it. >> what do you say for someone who studies the way that -- you wrote a book about sort of thinking about how your enemy is modeling what you're doing, right? >> right. >> what do you think for people to say, look, this was the point to send this message and they're now going to make future calculations that maybe won't change the trajectory of the war but this red line will now be respected? >> well, the belief that you can correctly present your message to a foreign leader, they will correctly interpret it on the basis that you want them to and then they will change their behavior based on that interpreted correct message is a false one. and it's not the basis for -- it

should not be the basis for u.s. military strategy at all. >> you think that that even as an end which is we're going to send a message, even as an objective is a bad objective? >> sending messages is not a military mission. military missions are to destroy things and kill people. the political objective is to compel assad from stopping the civil war and brutality against civilians or deter him from undertaking another chemical weapons attack. the problem is they set a very lobar with deterrents because assad doesn't need to use chemical weapons again. he has plenty of means of lethality so he will likely not use chemical weapons again but he will conduct additional atrocities which then trump will have to decide whether or not to respond to or to appear weak and uncredible. >> the other thing that's dangerous is the message always sent by the maneuvers is to you and me and the pavlovian response is to treat the president that takes these military strikes as a war time

president and to give a certain extra measure of deference and then to talk about the tactics, what was hit, what was harmed, what was done and not to unpack the why or to unpack whether or not it makes sense. >> i want both of you to stick around. we'll have more on this conversation right after this quick break. remember here at ally, nothing stops us from doing right by our customers. who's with me? we're like a basketball team here at ally. if a basketball team had over 7... i'm in. 7,000 players. our plays are a little unorthodox. but to beat the big boys, you need smarter ways to save people money.

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states cannot and should not intervene every time there is a crisis in the world. let me be clear about why we should act and act now. when we face a situation like we do, with innocent people facing the prospect of violence on a horrific scale, when we have a mandate to help, in this case, a request from the iraqi government, and when we have the unique capabilities to help overt a massacre, i think the united states of america cannot turn a blind eye. >> that is president obama authorizing targeted air strikes against isis threatening to the yazidis, a christian minority group. it marked the first battlefield role the u.s. had since we pulled out in 2011. it now features over 5,000 troops in the country. still with me joy and reed. the point here about mt. sinjar,

targeted responsibility to protect humanitarian interventions. in both cases, they didn't stop at that. i think watching what happened last night, what does history tell us how likely they are? >> everywhere u.s. forces are deployed, they are taking on additional missions. this is not just a slippery slope or mission creep as people describe it. it is actually like all military interventions. once forces are in theater, they come at risk. there are other complementary objectives. so the initial humanitarian impulse later became for regime change and you can imagine now initial cruise missile strikes will lead to regime change against assad. >> i want to bring in an american civil rights attorney. i think anyone who has been watching syria basically feels almost paralyzed by the aura of

it all. but also there's a skepticism people have of improving the lives of syrians but lots of syrians i talked to don't feel that way. how do you feel? >> let's not forget syria is on the border of iraq. i think syrians are familiar with what american intervention even for the sake of iraqis looks like. syria also took in many refugees from iraq over the last several decades. so, obviously, while i think for some people there might have been a little bit of satisfaction in seeing bashar al assad finally be dealt some kind of slap for everything that he has done, sort of like the first moment we saw a stop to the impunity impunity, i don't think anyone is naive about what intervention can look like. i also think -- and this is sort of like the limits. there are many other ways to intervene other than military

ones. i don't think we are looking at this from the perspective of, how do we secure syria for a free place per syrians, a place they can actualize their dreams and potentials. these conversations i've been having throughout the day are much more about moving ships around on the border. >> this is really important to me because i have been making this point over the last two days, if we have a humanitarian desire to help people, we can let is refugees, fully fund refugee programs, many of which are underfunded. millions are in terrible conditions. what shouldn't be included? >> we are not correct in identifying principal factors are iran and russia. but is it really -- is the only thing we have in our imagination our arsenal that we have to engage these two nuclear powers militarily. president trump is, supposedly, you know, the art of the deal guy.

so why are we not talking about ways to -- it is not easy. you have to give up things but there has to be some kind of discussion with people who are pulling the strings in syria. confronting them militarily, that's not going to be very great for syrians, is it? >> that's a really good point. part of this is, again, the context of what is foregrounded and what's backgrounded, that there's sort of attention. the point sort of limits the conversation. something that i have banked on a bit. there is a war threatening right now. numerous groups, that is being pursued by our allies. the number of saudis that could be stopped with not much more than a phone call or more and that's not on the table as a humanitarian -- >> we make these decisions all the time. half of my bloodline is from the congo where half of my blood

line was being exterminated and we didn't feel the need to intervene. you have seen this before. it did not end well in iraq. >> when they are going on, it's hard to imagine, but all wars end. internationalized wars last longer because more outside great powers have now collected interest in there and their credibility is on the line. this past administration was able to broker a deal to get rid of iran's nuclear program, it's unimaginable that this administration cannot find a deal because, as we know from history, civil wars are the fuel for terrorism and instability and a lot of problems in the region. >> and that seems to you, i think so people have watched this horrible turmoil in syria that the idea of a diplomatic solution seems impossible. it's interesting to hear you think it has to be the solution. >> and listen, before we pile oup the current administration, to be fair, president obama was negotiating a nuclear deal with

iran. he had -- it's harder now that we're not at the table with iran or russia but there was an opportunity there. so these choices haven't just been rejected by the current administration. they were rejected by the previous administration as well. >> joy reed and micah and thank you for having that conversation. i feel like the nature of american military involvement is -- we see the world through a straw as soon as the missiles started firing. it's useful to take a step back, talk a little bit about what is the context. be sure and check out the new book "the home that was our country." an event happening tomorrow in brooklyn for my new book. the great wes lowery joins me to talk about my book, racing and policing in america. he's got a great book called "they can't kill us all." part of the brooklyn voices series. there are some tickets still available. come check it out. hopefully my voice won't be gone by then. we'll have the details on that.

>> i have some fishermen's lozenges if you want to check it out. thank you for joining us this hour. in 1952, we've got some great images of this. in 1952, iraq's king, iraq's teenage king, came to visit the united states. he was a teenager. he was only 17 years old. he apparently loved baseball. while he was here, he met jackie robinson. he also met the u.s. secretary of state. he met president truman. he had been king since he was a little kid. but he came to the u.s. at the age of 17. he became officially an adult the following year at which point from 1953 on, the more or less worldly teenage king of iraq, he assumed his position as