And some of us oppose some of those things, or at least what we see as military adventurism, and nonetheless also oppose abrupt actions taken injudiciously.
My take: I want American soldiers out of MENA. And I want them withdrawn in a measured way that does not leave a gaping power vacuum and massive humanitarian crisis in their wake. Once the bull has fucked up the china shop, let’s see if we can’t get him out through the hole he made instead of letting him just smash a new one out the other side.
I think it’s a good thing, or at least the best available course of action under the circumstances. Here’s why.
The USA has a foreign policy establishment, consisting of certain politicians, unelected officials, media outlets, and think tanks who have guided and shaped all policies in the Middle East for the past generation. And they keep shaping terrible decisions. They’ve given us war, war, war and more war. They’ve given us war in Iraq and war in Afghanistan and war in Libya and war in Syria. They’ve given us bombing campaigns in Somalia and Pakistan and elsewhere. And where they don’t have the American military waging war directly, they have us providing weapons for other people’s wars, as is now happening in Yemen.
So the foreign policy establishment is a bunch of evil bastards who like spending trillions of dollars waging war in the Middle East while showing, at best, indifference to whether large numbers of innocent people are killed. They’re also deeply entrenched. Every reformer who comes in and tries to reduce the number of wars, the amount of killing, and the massive spending on those wars and killing, eventually gets defeated. Obama took office ten years ago with an obvious mandate to change policy in the Middle East. Although he did initially pull American troops from Iraq, somehow during his administration we ended up waging yet more wars, and to top it all our troops were back in Iraq by the time he left office.
So the foreign policy establishment is the problem and Trump is smart enough to know this, even if his critics are not. Suppose Trump were to announce that he wanted to withdraw troops from Syria, so he was going to consult with lots of experts and devise a careful strategy and reach agreements with our allies and set up a plan to have our troops out within two years. What would happen? The establishment would spend those two years plotting to undermine Trump’s strategy and force him to stay in Syria. Heck, in two years Bill Kristol would have founded a new magazine devoted to explaining why Republicans must support 30,000 troops at permanent bases in the country.
The only way to beat the establishment and actually end a war for once is to move quickly and not give the bad guys time to organize. That’s what Trump is doing.
The USA has a medical doctrine establishment, consisting of certain doctors, unelected officials, media outlets, and think tanks who have guided and shaped all policies in the medical profession for the past generation. And they keep shaping terrible decisions. They’ve given us death, death, death and more death. They’ve given us death of old age and death by cancer and death by ebola and death by malaria. They’ve given us HIV prevention campaigns in Somalia and Pakistan and elsewhere. And where they don’t have the American medical establishment peddling snake oil directly, they have us providing medicines for other people’s efforts, as is now happening in Yemen.
This is a stupid analogy for obvious reasons. The foreign policy establishment has gotten us into numerous pointless wars in and conflicts in the Middle East that have wasted trillions of dollars, killed thousands of people, and completely failed to accomplish their states goals. By merely not waging the wars that the establishment demanded, the money would have been saved and the lives not lost. There is no equivalence between that and medicine.
I referenced “bombing campaigns in Somalia and Pakistan and elsewhere”. You mocked it by saying that the American medical establishment has given us “HIV prevention campaigns in Somalia and Pakistan and elsewhere”. (I’m not aware that they’ve done so, but even if they have it’s a stupid analogy.) Bombing kills people, while AIDS prevention saves lives. Surely you’re smart enough to know this. Surely you don’t need me to point it out.
Do you think that the foreign policy establishment has proven itself successful through the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, and elsewhere? Do you think that their record provides any reason to trust them when they demand unending troop presence in Syria? If so, why not provide a logical defense rather than just being snarky?
Given that we do not have a control Earth to compare against, I would suggest that it’s impossible to prove anything one way or the other.
But I do note the following points:
Being in the military is a profession, not a crime. Society pays these people to do it. Presumably, we do so because we believe that there is an upside to shooting people. You should ask yourself what that is.
You are not a general, a senator on the Armed Services committee, a foreign policy analyst with a focus on the Middle East, an ambassador to the Middle East, nor most anyone else who knows what all options there might be that we can actually go for, nor what the likely repercussions are should no action be taken. Those people who are those things - who have received the information to be able to make these sorts of decisions - have done something that is consistent, as you say, for generation after generation. Again, you should ask yourself why that is.
Taking the simple assumption that death is bad, and anyone associated with death is thus evil, and so we are doing bad, is not realistic. It is like blaming the continued existence of death by illness to doctors.
It is the nirvana fallacy, it’s taking a basic assumption that the world must contain a perfect path to joy and happiness if only it won’t for all those corrupt, dishonest, evil people that we voted to represent us as we would act if we had access to the experts and time to be able to make rational and well-reasoned decisions.
You should ask, are they doing something different than you believe they should because they are corrupt, dishonest, and evil, or because they had access to the experts and time to be able to come to a different conclusion than you, some random opinionated person on the Internet who believes that there can be an obvious, simple, and perfect solution to global conflict?
And yes, this is an argument from authority. But argument from authority is a) better than the nirvana fallacy, and b) the correct answer unless you have some understanding of how the authorities came to that conclusion and why it’s reasonable to believe that they have gotten it wrong. It’s reasonable to disbelieve the authority of a 17th century medic, on the basis that he is working from a doctrine that has never been scientifically tested. It’s unreasonable to disbelieve in the medical profession because death still exists. And, similarly, it is unreasonable to disbelieve in the advice of the foreign policy and military community because war still exists.
Let’s see, who has 17 years of continuous failure in the region? Col, Brig Gen, Maj Gen, Lt Gen, Gen, Secretary Matthis.
He is the symbol of the failure of the US Military to imposes the National will in the region. In a just world he would have been Byng’d ages ago…I hear the USS Enterptise is free these days.
Trump is the village idiot. But the only one to point out the Emperor has no clothes.
Is that the fault of the generals or the fault of the Presidents? Bush and Trump are both idiots (and the latter, potentially, is working against American interests on an active basis). Obama thought that he knew better than the generals and tried to dial things down, just to have to go all Surge-y because he allowed the ISIS snowball to snowball.
Yes, it is the fault of the US military, ultimately. Enforcing policy is their responsibility and they have failed. The merits of the policy given to them is irrelevant. They should have asked for what was needed to accomplish the mission and if it was not forthcoming, resigned. Instead we see people like Matthis promoted upwards despite all and blaming everyone and everything under the sun. Right now the US is holding direct talks with the Taliban, the sworn enemy of 2001. Who the military has spent nearly 2 decades fighting. Who now control or contest most of the country.
I thought it very likely that Trump would start a new war early in his first term.
Fortunately, I was wrong about that.
I still think he is orders of magnitude worse than any other president. That said, I’d much rather have him impulsively pulling our troops out of Middle East war zones than impulsively sending them in.
I think we’ll see that almost any impulsive move will end up being be a bad one. I predict that Russia will help Assad finish steamrolling Syria. With their Mediterranean interests being thus secured by a grateful autocratic ally, Russia will be free to return to pressing their respective suits in Ukraine, Georgia, and the Baltics, which is more dangerous for everyone.
As much as I dislike this president, I’m not going to condemn everything he does simply because it is he who does it. I’m reminded of my youth, when folk said we oughtta simply declare victory in Viet Nam, withdraw, and hold a parade. Coulda gotten us to pretty much the same place a lot quicker/cheaper.
And I’ve long urged less reliance on our military to dictate other countries’ internal dynamics.
And I’ve long disfavored the deification of all things military - which is only enhanced by having boots on foreign ground. Especially when there is no clear purpose or end in sight.
So I’m glad to have troops come home from Syria.
Hey - and as a federal employee, Trump gave us Christmas Eve off! So that makes ANOTHER thing he got right in my mind! (Actually, I get plenty of vacation time and have a flexible schedule, and couldn’t care less about the extra day off.)
I thought Mattis was hand-picked for his military expertise. In any case, he has a good reputation in the Marines.
I’m for shrinking the military and avoiding dumb conflicts (Vietnam remains unexplained to me, and Iraq was based on false premises, to name two). What gives me pause with this move is that Trump’s first national security advisor Flynn was taking money from Turkey in exchange for policy concessions. Turkey wants to take out the Kurds in this area and as I understand it, part of the mission of our troops there is to prevent Turkey from doing so. Pulling out opens the door for Turkey to kill them all.
I see that some people don’t care if everyone in the country is killed. I see the argument that the US doesn’t have permanent relationships with non-state entities. I accept that Trump is CiC, but also think it is inappropriate to make major military decisions via tweet. I also see that treating our allies like this can make it harder to make friends in the future.
To me, this one doesn’t break down into one of two simple categories: good or bad.
I’m pretty sure I recall a fairly large number of resignations under Bush. Mattis is now resigning. I don’t recall any under Obama, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some.
I would also suggest that your view of how the war should unfold might not match with reality. Say that you are the President and your Secretary of Defense comes to you and says, “Okay, well, if we didn’t have morals, we could win against the Taliban by simply blowing a few key cities off the surface of the Earth in a surprise attack, but 99% of the people we would kill would be innocent. I won’t do that even if you order me to. We could send in a half million troops to take over the country, police the streets, and simply make Afghanistan the 51st state of the USA. If we do that, then we will probably need to maintain it for about 40 years, so that we can cycle through a few generations, each raised attending schools that teach American-style values and morality, so that the country can start to run on its own and stay honest and good without us. And really anything else won’t work to achieve our aims. We can send in troops once a year to kill any tribal chieftain who’s particularly more violent or evil than the rest, and hope that better people come in to replace them, and just keep doing that like mowing the grass. Over time, that will sort of save lives, but it won’t prevent the place from being a backwater full of crazy ideas and thuggish leaders that drive people towards lashing out via terrorism, though it might make it a bit less common. And if we do nothing, then we’ll have lots of terrorism as an outgrowth of the horrible conditions the local chieftains put everyone under - so both they and we will suffer, with no likely end to it. Personally, I advocate that we occupy the country and run it as a special territory, but what are your orders?”
And I suspect that you, like most Presidents, would choose to do none of those things. You would order them to do some wishy-washy thing that is not-quite an occupation, but gives plausible deniability that it isn’t really. You would feel satisfied only owning a small portion of the country, because it’s the part that is easy enough to hold that you don’t have to send lots of troops. You would tell the people of the US that we have a strategy, and make it seem like the end target was next year, not two generations future. And so the people will think that we’re failing even though we’re doing about as well as we can given that we expect it to take 40 years and we’re holding 50% of the country and mostly succeeding at our goals within that area, using mostly local troops, and at 1/5th the budgets and 1/100th the manpower that we would really need to do the whole shebang that we should be doing.
And the military people would look at you, the politician, and blame you for making them look like failures, even though they know that this is all by design, all what was expected, and the end result of a devil’s compromise that trades the health and safety of millions of people in Afghanistan, who live outside the bubble, for political necessities and appeasement of a mass public who would rather be lied to than do the right thing.
Enforcing US policy is not the military’s responsibility. It’s the responsibility of the US government of which the military is one part. If the military is not the correct tool for the job or is failing to accomplish the goals, then it is the government that is responsible for finding other means to pursue its ends. The military can be a major part of the solution or a minor part of the solution, but it is extremely rare that they are the complete solution to any problem and personally I can’t think of a time in the last 100 years when any policy was their complete responsibility. I think that they likely accomplished in Afghanistan what could be accomplished militarily. They did bring a measure of stability and they did overthrow the Taliban. The problem was that the US doesn’t really have an agency with any expertise in creating new countries and that’s what needed to happen. That’s not a military responsibility. What do they know about country building? It’s probably more the State Department than anywhere else, but they are diplomats and not nation builders. I think our failures in Afghanistan are not military in nature, after all, we could drop 100 thousand troops into Afghanistan and in short order win everything back, but to what end? The failures are diplomatic, but more than that, it’s not really even knowing what it is we hope to achieve, nor having any clear path to achieve it and ultimately that’s a buck that rests with the Executive and Legislative branches.
If I meet anyone who makes that assumption, I’ll let them now. But I’ve never met anyone who does.
When exactly did I say that there can be an obvious, simple, and perfect solution to global conflict? I don’t recall saying any such thing. Can you quote the post in which I expressed belief in an obvious, simple, and perfect solution to global conflict? If not, I might suspect that you’re trying to pin a belief on me that I never actually expressed.
No kidding.
In past generations, there were plenty of authorities who suppotred Prohibition, or the use of lobotomy, or racial segregation. Most people believed in those authorities and they got their way for a long time, causing a great deal of harm along the way. But they were wrong. Authorities in many fields have been wrong about many things many times. That’s why argument from authority appears on every list of common logical fallacies.
Given the opportunity to defend the foreign policy establishment, you did not offer a single example of successful leadership and decision-making by that establishment. Instead your argument could basically be summarized as, “They’re the establishment so shut up and don’t question them.” Again, to give examples of what American policy has actually accomplished:
Went to war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. 18 years later, we’re still at war against the Taliban. We’ve spend hundreds of billions of dollars, some of which has ended up in the hands of the Taliban.
Went to war in Iraq. Stated goal was to stop Saddam from using his WMDs and to combat terrorism. The WMDs were non-existent, and we created a power vacuum which allowed the rise of ISIS, the most dangerous Islamic terrorist group ever.
Bombed Yemen. Stated goal was political stability and defeat of terrorism. Ten years later, Yemen has collapsed into chaos and is a breeding ground for terrorism.
Libya. 5. Somalia. 6. etc…
It’s impossible to mount a defense of American policy in any of these places. I’m guessing you agree with this, since you’re not even trying to do so.
I’m suspicious of the withdrawal because Trump’s doing it and because Putin wants it. Neither of these suspicions warrants staying in Syria in the first place.
Traditionally, when America wants to intervene in another country’s affairs, we do it by propping up the most pro-American (or least virulently anti-Israel) faction. Syria has nothing that fits that description and never will. And there is no reliable stepping-off point for America for the quagmire that is the Syrian civil war. And there is no imaginable outcome that will be to America’s benefit, or justify its involvement.
It chafes me to say that orange-faced freak made the right move, but in this case, he did. I won’t be voting for him in 2020, but this one time, I will say “bravo.”
Sorry, but you have to be blind to say “Bravo” to this move. You can reasonably agree with the need to bring home all Americans in Syria, but just tweeting it out without consulting anyone with a clue, or at least giving them time to make preparations before making it public, is far, far from being the right move.
“The West fucks over the Kurds yet again. Now sports.”
They’re like Charlie Brown, only the football is their actual lives. Are we going to put boots back on the ground to stop the coming genocide, or just write them off like the Yemenis?
(Actually, I get plenty of vacation time and have a flexible schedule, and couldn’t care less about the extra day off.)