12/19/2018

AFGHANISTAN/ISIS/SYRIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/WAR: “President Donald Trump is pulling out of the wrong war at the wrong time. (The right war to bring to an end, as he’s toyed with in the past, is Afghanistan, which after 17 years is probably unwinnable.) But unless cooler, saner heads in the Pentagon, the White House or his political base can talk him down off this ledge, the President has set his target now on Syria. For in sharp contrast to his tweet, ‘We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency,’ America has not won this war in Syria. Indeed, a sudden and precipitous withdrawal of all US forces there can only be compared with George W. Bush’s catastrophic ‘Mission Accomplished’ speech from the deck of the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003. There followed eight more years of horrific bloodshed in Iraq and thousands more American casualties until the final American withdrawal in 2011. All this, too, only led up to the eventual rise of ISIS. America and its allies have not in fact wiped out the terror group, but have instead driven it deep underground.”

David A. Andelman, “Trump is pulling out of the wrong war at the wrong time,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, December 19, 2018 10:35 pm