The Syrian pullout

Today President Trump announced that US forces would be withdrawing from Syria.  Their exact numbers and locations have been a closely-guarded secret ever since the Obama administration was forced to re-enter Iraq following the rise of the Islamic State, so it's hard to say how quickly (or completely) they are leaving.

But Trump has been clear:  we are leaving.

Naturally, the people who write about war for a living are upset.  Note that the vast majority of these people have not - and never intend to - actually fight in a war, but they are absolutely certain that endless American combat operations are a great idea.

News coverage is uniformly negative, of course, because Americans should keep on fight and dying in a country we aren't at war with and haven't formally invaded.  And this should go on forever.

It's almost as if that whole "give peace a chance/no blood for oil" line was total bullshit.

It's no coincidence that those beating the drums loudest for endless combat operations are also the biggest fans of the late, unlamented The Weekly Standard.   Their strident opposition tells us Trump is doing the right thing since they are uniformly wrong about everything they advocate.

Some might wonder who will occupy the power vacuum left by America's departure.  It will likely be Bashar Assad, who is still the nominal ruler of Syria.  Some of the uber-hawks naturally want to overthrow him so that the US can maintain a third shit-show of a country.  In reality, the Islamic State has been whipped pretty hard and if it rises again, we can smack it around some more.

This is the classical way to deal with piracy and unsavory actors: punitive expeditions.  It's clear that Trump's "principled realism" is based on the notion that we will never be loved and will never turn the world into upstate Vermont.  What we can do is hammer the ever-living crap out people who displease us, which is a far more reliable (and less expensive) form of deterrence.

Indeed, I admit that was what I expected in both Afghanistan and Iraq:  crack some skulls, kill the leaders, and then set up reasonably reliable strong men to keep order as we go home.   Instead, we have a war in Afghanistan that has dragged on so long, GIs who enlisted after 9/11 will be able to collect full retirement pay before it ends. 

This is insane, and why the Bush family is just as culpable as the feckless Obama crew.

Trump understands this and that's why his goal is to pull back our exhausted and overextended forces, regroup them and at the same time maintain a powerful force in being in case anyone gets ideas.

It's intelligent, sustainable and wise, which is why the usual suspects hate it.

Comments

[K.N. McBride]

What does the "peace" you speak of even look like?

[Alkiabades]

We still have bases in Germany and Japan. Indeed, they're some of our closest allies. We should withdraw after peace, not before it.