Luzerne County 911 employees win awards from Pennsylvania safety organization

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Anesthesiologist Venkat J. Iyer joins Geisinger Community Medical Center

<p>Throughout its history and especially since World War II, America has been a beacon for human rights and democracy. President Donald Trump is taking our foreign policy in a different direction, one where dictators are welcome.</p><p>We can only hope Trump and his top advisers have second thoughts and change course after a suspected nerve gas attack Tuesday in Syria killed at least 50, including children. Even in the bloody six-year civil war with 400,000 dead, this is an atrocity that cannot go unanswered.</p><p>Witnesses said the raid in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun was carried out by Syrian jets, which the government denied. But the White House condemned the &#8220;reprehensible&#8221; act by Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, though it also blamed Barack Obama for drawing a &#8220;red line&#8221; on chemical weapons in 2012 and letting Assad cross it.</p><p>There&#8217;s no indication, however, that Trump will act against Assad, either. While our European allies have steadfastly demanded his removal, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Tuesday that &#8220;regime change&#8221; isn&#8217;t possible because of &#8220;political realities.&#8221;</p><p>Tuesday&#8217;s outrage wouldn&#8217;t sound so hollow if Trump hadn&#8217;t been colluding with Russia and Vladimir Putin on a Syria policy that focuses on defeating the Islamic State and ignores Assad&#8217;s record of brutality.</p><p>And on days without horrible, heartbreaking images &#8212; like those of the dead Syrian children in a pile, half-naked and staring into space &#8212; the Trump White House doesn&#8217;t shy at all from giving its blessing to autocrats.</p><p>Just Monday, Trump praised Egypt&#8217;s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who seized power in a 2013 military coup. Obama barred him from the White House, but Trump gave him the honor of a handshake in the Oval Office. &#8220;He&#8217;s done a fantastic job in a very difficult situation,&#8221; Trump said, which would be shocking to opponents who fill his prisons or the loved ones of protestors who have been gunned down in the street by el-Sissi&#8217;s security forces.</p><p>At his Mar-a-Lago resort on Thursday when Trump meets Chinese President Xi Jinping for the first time, human rights isn&#8217;t likely to be near the top of the agenda, either. Trump wants to talk about trade and North Korea, not about China&#8217;s crackdown on dissent and its political prisoners.</p><p>Then there is Trump&#8217;s mysterious relationship with Putin and Russia. He is far less critical of the Putin regime &#8212; despite its annexation of Crimea, its aggression in Ukraine and its interference in the U.S presidential election &#8212; than our loyal NATO allies, who he says don&#8217;t spend enough on defense.</p><p>By treating foreign policy like real estate deals, Trump is calculating that fighting &#8220;radical Islamic terrorism,&#8221; as he insists on calling it, is far more important than democracy or human rights.</p><p>But when you embrace strongmen, you&#8217;re stained when they revert to their true character and do something horrific. Whatever voters wanted from Trump, they surely didn&#8217;t want him to ally America with dictators with the blood of innocents on their hands.</p><p>&#8212; The Sacramento Bee</p><style>
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Their view: Embracing dictators can sometimes be a bloody business