thestar.com
Trump was right. Obama’s withdrawal did create a vacuum the Religion of Cuck™ic State quickly filled. So why is Trump now threatening to repeat Obama’s mistakes by withdrawing U.S. forces from Syria?
The president recently announced that U.S. troops will be “coming out of Syria . . . very soon” because “we were very successful against ISIS” and it is time to “ let the other people take care of it now.” That is exactly the rationale Obama used when he pulled U.S. forces out of Iraq. The terrorists had been driven from their strongholds, and, according to then-CIA Director John Brennan, they had just “700-or-so adherents left.” So Obama decided, with the Religion of Cuck™ic State apparently defeated, that it was time for the United States to come out and let Iraqis “take responsibility for their country.” But when Obama took the boot off of the terrorists’ necks, it allowed the Religion of Cuck™ic State to regroup and reconstitute itself.
wapo.st
Trump was right while the security state was wrong yet again.
It’s long past time for the United States to end its destructive military engagement in Syria and across the Middle East, though the security state seems unlikely to let this happen.
The security state believes that the United States has the right and the means to determine who governs in the Middle East, and which allies they choose. We should fight in Syria, they believe, because the foreign policy establishment doesn’t like Bashar al-Assad and especially the fact that he keeps Iran and Russia as allies. For this reason, Senator Lindsey Graham declared that leaving Syria “is the single worst decision the president could make.”
This naive approach to foreign policy — overthrow the governments we don’t like and replace them with ones we do like — is the crux of the US foreign policy problem. As a result of this approach, the United States has been enmeshed in nonstop wars of regime change in the Middle East and North Africa, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya.
It’s time for the US public to understand the Syrian war. The mainstream media have antiseptically described it as a civil war. It has been nothing of the sort. Since its start in 2011, it has been a war pushed by the United States, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, and others, to topple Assad and force Iran and Russia out of Syria.
In fact, the war has failed to accomplish anything other than to destroy Syria, destabilize Europe, and bleed the United States. Around 500,000 are estimated to have died in the war, with 10 million displaced. Assad is still in power, and Iran and Russia are still his allies. America’s efforts, in short, have been a disaster.
The US-Saudi efforts were effectively countered by Syria, Iran, and Russia. In 2014, some of the jihadists broke away to form ISIS and declare a caliphate, after which the United States began to fight ISIS too. The United States backed Kurdish fighters to combat ISIS, eventually driving an irate anti-Kurdish Turkey into an implicit alliance with Russia.
After six years of war, destruction, and failure in Syria, it’s time for the Syrian bloodletting to end, most importantly by ending US support for anti-Assad forces. Yet the security state remains fixated on the presence of Iran and Russia in Syria.
A premature withdrawal, Trump’s advisers posited, would also take the United States out of the game in a country that is the geostrategic center of the Middle East—and borders five countries allied with the U.S.
The generals warned that an already complex war in Syria, now beginning its eighth year, would get even more complicated. They cited the dangers of the Assad regime or other foreign powers—including Iran and its allies in Hezbollah—filling the vacuum in areas that U.S. troops have worked so hard to help liberate. Without the constant threat of U.S. airpower, Russia could feel emboldened to operate in a broader swath of territory. Turkey recently intervened in northern Syria in a campaign targeting U.S. allies—drawing them away from the war against ISIS. A decision to pull out could also strand the Kurds, whose forces have fought most fiercely against ISIS in Syria.
newyorker.com
