Trump did it!

This could be the moment when we and the rest of the globe start to think differently about Donald Trump. He made a decision, he wanted instant action and then he went back to dinner with President Xi Zinping at his Florida resort. All wrapped up nicely, thank you. I just cannot imagine Obama doing that. First, he wouldn't have wanted to do anything to disrupt dinner with the Chinese president, second he would have wanted more time to make a decision, and third, he would probably have delayed taking action until he had sought the advice of allies and possibly formed a coalition to strike Syria. That may be unfair, but I always recall talking to a high-up official in Obama's National Security Council who told me: "The worst thing about Obama for us was that he just couldn't make a decision. He had all the options in front of him but he couldn't decide which one to go for." To be totally fair to Obama, he did make up his mind about Osama bin Laden. He chose potentially the most dangerous option which was to send in a Seal team to kill him at his compound in Abbottabad in Pakistan, even though the intelligence on his whereabouts was less than 80 per cent. He rejected the US Air Force option which was to send a B2 stealth bomber to destroy the compound. But over Afghanistan, Obama prevaricated for months before he eventually decided to send a surge of troops there, although not on the scale the military wanted. Trump has now made four military decisions: he approved a stepping up attacks on terrorists in Yemen and Somalia, he agreed to more aggression and greater flexibility for commanders to attack Isis in Iraq and Syria, he gave the go ahead for the special forces attack on an al-Qaeda compound in Yemen in January which didn't go so well, leading to many civilian deaths, and then he said an almost instant yes to bombing Assad's airbase from where chemical weapon strikes had been launched. No delay, just: "Go for it." Now that sort of presidential decision-making isn't necessarily going to work each time and could even lead to disaster. But the fact is, strong leadership in whatever field, whether military, economic, strategic or domestic, has to be better than weak leadership, especially when it involves the world's only superpower and the West's leading nation. Everyone, from Putin to Kim Jong-un to Xi Zinping to the ayatollahs in Iran will take notice. I suspect there are two people in Washington who will be doing high-fives right now: General Jim Mattis, the Defense Secretary, and Lieutenant-General HR McMaster, the National Security Adviser. They both will have known of the importance of striking at Assad this time. That would have been their advice. Trump agreed without demur.