President Donald Trump's announcement on Dec. 20 that his administration would quickly pull some 2,000 troops from Syria and 7,000 of the 14,000 in Afghanistan seemed to have caught many high-ranking U.S. as well and U.S. allies around the globe off guard.
It is unclear, however, to what extent the pullout will be able to be implemented. Trump is under a lot of pressure from even his supporters to back off or slow down the plan.
This often happens throughout history, when the core beliefs of a country promulgated by elites are challenged — and in the case of the U.S., it is both Republican and Democratic elites. The dismay at the retirement of Secretary of Defense James Mattis indicates the many battles ahead for a rebalancing of U.S. foreign policy.
The writer of this op-ed misses one very critical fact; the "winner" from this draw-down of US forces in Syria, is Israel's Benyamin Netanyahu, now fighting for his political life because he is on the keening edge of potentially being indicted for corruption by Israel's Attorney General.
Netanyahu has recently dissolved the Knesset, and set the date of 9 April for the next round of elections.
As now both Prime Minister and Minister of Defence, he can now wreak whatever havoc he wants in Syria (or Lebanon, or Iran), for these next 4 months until the election, with US collusion and cooperation from the commanders and their troops still on the ground.
And I would like to politely mention to the writer of this op-ed, that there will be utterly zero "rebalancing' of US Foreign Policy, particularly in the Middle East, as long as Trump is outsourcing his Middle East Policy to Prime Minister Netanyahu.
There are moments where there are goals to be achieved with which we should be aligned with Israel; but a regional war against Syria, Iran, and Lebanon, (with Russia most likely to take the side of these countries)at the enormous costs, which Tel Aviv fully expects to be expended in American blood, and American money?!?
So President Trump, I feel the need to strongly caution you, that the use of US troops, fighting and dying for what can only be characterized as a wretchedly apartheid, rogue theocracy with nuclear weapons, is not the highest and best use of US troops right now.
And at its point in its history, the US military doesn't have the weaponry; the troop strength; the money, or the manufacturing to insure a victory in this kind of war.