Is that what we should be looking at? influencing outcomes once any rebuilding begins possible?
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/...tion=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage
ec. 19, 2018
WASHINGTON — President Trump has always taken a contrarian’s view of American military power: He wants to command the biggest, toughest forces on earth, and he wants to keep them at home.
The lessons that many in the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies learned in the post-9/11 era — that deployed forces are key to stopping terrorists before they reach American shores and vital to maintaining the alliances that keep the world safe — never resonated with Mr. Trump.
He is far more engaged with the idea of using the military to secure the Mexican border than to counter Russia, Iran, North Korea and China.
And now, by ordering the small American force of 2,000 troops to leave Syria, Mr. Trump is about to turn his theory into practice. He is doing so to the quiet horror of many of his senior aides, who have long argued that to pull out of Syria (or Afghanistan, another conflict in which Mr. Trump has said America has no legitimate long-term role) is to ignore the lessons of the past two decades.
But even Mr. Trump’s biggest critics, the Democrats, will have a hard time going after him on this decision.
Mr. Trump’s view that American forces cannot alter the strategic balance in the Middle East, and should not be there, was fundamentally shared by his immediate predecessor, Barack Obama. It was Mr. Obama who, at almost the exact same moment in his presidency, announced the removal of America’s last troops in Iraq — fulfilling a campaign promise.
Mr. Obama’s strategy — rely on local partners on the ground, use American air power when necessary to defend American interests and celebrate a return of American troops for the holidays — sounds a lot like discussions inside Mr. Trump’s White House over the past several days. Which is exactly what grates on some of the more hawkish Republicans in Congress.
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said that if Mr. Obama “had done this, we’d be going nuts right now.” And Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, said top military leaders “have no idea where this weak decision came from.”
Both the 44th and 45th presidents looked at troop commitments that have now lasted 17 years — nearly 170,000 American troops in Iraq at the peak in 2007, and more than 100,000 in Afghanistan 2011 — and concluded that their long-term effect was marginal, at best. Keeping 2,000 in Syria was not going to make a difference.
“On this issue — maybe on this issue alone — there is more continuity between Trump and Obama than would make either administration comfortable,” said Richard N. Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a senior official in the Bush administration in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/...tion=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage
ec. 19, 2018
WASHINGTON — President Trump has always taken a contrarian’s view of American military power: He wants to command the biggest, toughest forces on earth, and he wants to keep them at home.
The lessons that many in the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies learned in the post-9/11 era — that deployed forces are key to stopping terrorists before they reach American shores and vital to maintaining the alliances that keep the world safe — never resonated with Mr. Trump.
He is far more engaged with the idea of using the military to secure the Mexican border than to counter Russia, Iran, North Korea and China.
And now, by ordering the small American force of 2,000 troops to leave Syria, Mr. Trump is about to turn his theory into practice. He is doing so to the quiet horror of many of his senior aides, who have long argued that to pull out of Syria (or Afghanistan, another conflict in which Mr. Trump has said America has no legitimate long-term role) is to ignore the lessons of the past two decades.
But even Mr. Trump’s biggest critics, the Democrats, will have a hard time going after him on this decision.
Mr. Trump’s view that American forces cannot alter the strategic balance in the Middle East, and should not be there, was fundamentally shared by his immediate predecessor, Barack Obama. It was Mr. Obama who, at almost the exact same moment in his presidency, announced the removal of America’s last troops in Iraq — fulfilling a campaign promise.
Mr. Obama’s strategy — rely on local partners on the ground, use American air power when necessary to defend American interests and celebrate a return of American troops for the holidays — sounds a lot like discussions inside Mr. Trump’s White House over the past several days. Which is exactly what grates on some of the more hawkish Republicans in Congress.
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said that if Mr. Obama “had done this, we’d be going nuts right now.” And Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, said top military leaders “have no idea where this weak decision came from.”
Both the 44th and 45th presidents looked at troop commitments that have now lasted 17 years — nearly 170,000 American troops in Iraq at the peak in 2007, and more than 100,000 in Afghanistan 2011 — and concluded that their long-term effect was marginal, at best. Keeping 2,000 in Syria was not going to make a difference.
“On this issue — maybe on this issue alone — there is more continuity between Trump and Obama than would make either administration comfortable,” said Richard N. Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a senior official in the Bush administration in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
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