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<\/a><\/p>\nby James George Jatras
\nThe Strategic Culture Foundation<\/p>\n
This has been an extraordinary week… After two years of getting rolled by the Washington establishment, it\u00a0seems that President Donald Trump woke up and suddenly realized<\/a>, \u201cHey \u2013\u00a0I\u2019m<\/em>\u00a0the president! I have the legal authority to\u00a0do<\/em>\u00a0stuff!\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n All of this should be taken with a big grain of salt.\u00a0While this week\u2019s assertiveness perhaps provides further proof that Trump\u2019s impulses are right, it doesn\u2019t mean he can implement them.<\/strong><\/p>\n The Syria withdrawal will be difficult. The\u00a0entire establishment, including the otherwise pro-Trump talking heads on\u00a0Fox News<\/a>,\u00a0are dead set against him<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 except for\u00a0Tucker Carlson<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Laura Ingraham<\/a>.<\/p>\n Senator Lindsey Graham is demanding\u00a0hearings on how to block the Syria pullout<\/a>.\u00a0 Congress hardly ever quibbles with a president\u2019s putting troops\u00a0into\u00a0a country, where the Legislative Branch has legitimate Constitutional power. But if a president under his absolute command authority wants to pull them\u00a0out\u00a0\u2013 even someplace where they\u2019re deployed illegally, as in Syria \u2013\u00a0well hold on just a minute!<\/em><\/p>\n We are being told our getting out of Syria and Afghanistan will be a\u00a0huge \u201cgift\u201d to Russia and Iran<\/a>. Worse, it is being compared to Barack Obama\u2019s \u201cpremature\u201d withdrawal from Iraq<\/a>\u00a0(falsely pointed to as the cause of the rise of ISIS<\/a>) and will set the stage for \u201cchaos.\u201d By that standard, we can never leave anywhere.<\/p>\n This will be a critical time for the Trump presidency. (And if God is\u00a0really\u00a0<\/em>on his side, he soon might\u00a0get another Supreme Court pick<\/a>.) If he can get the machinery of the Executive Branch to implement his decision to withdraw from Syria, and if he can pick a replacement to General Mattis who actually agrees with Trump\u2019s views, we might start getting the America First policy Trump ran on in 2016.<\/p>\n Mattis himself said in his resignation letter,\u00a0\u201cBecause you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these\u00a0[i.e., support for so-called \u201callies\u201d]\u00a0and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position.”<\/em><\/p>\n Right on, Mad Dog!\u00a0In fact Trump should have had someone \u201cbetter aligned\u201d with him in that capacity from the get-go. It is now imperative that he picks someone who agrees with his core positions, starting with withdrawal from Syria and Afghanistan, and reducing confrontation with Russia.<\/p>\n Former\u00a0Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel<\/a>\u00a0complains that \u201cour government is not a one-man show.\u201d Well, the \u201cgovernment\u201d isn\u2019t, but the Executive Branch is.\u00a0Article II, Section 1<\/a>: \u201cThe executive Power shall be vested in a President of the\u00a0United States of\u00a0America.\u201d Him. The President. Nobody else. Period.<\/p>\n Already the drumbeat to saddle Trump with another Swamp critter at the Pentagon is starting: \u201cSeveral possible replacements for Mattis this week trashed the president\u2019s decision to pull out of Syria. Retired Gen. Jack Keane called the move a \u201cstrategic mistake\u201d on Twitter. Republican Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) signed a letter demanding Trump reconsider the decision and warning that the withdrawal bolsters Iran and Russia.\u201d If Trump even considers any of the above as Mattis\u2019s replacement, he\u2019ll be in worse shape than he has been for the past two years.<\/p>\n On the other hand, if Trump does pick someone who agrees with him about Syria and Afghanistan, never mind\u00a0getting along with Russia<\/a>, can he get that person confirmed by the Senate? One possibility would be to nominate someone like Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney specifically to run the Pentagon bureaucracy and get control of costs, while explicitly deferring operational decisions to the Commander in Chief in consultation with the Service Chiefs.<\/p>\n Right now on Syria Trump is facing pushback from virtually the whole Deep State establishment, Republicans and Democrats alike, as well as the media from\u00a0Fox News<\/em>,\u00a0to\u00a0NPR<\/em>,\u00a0to\u00a0MSNBC<\/em>.\u00a0Terror has again gripped the establishment that the Trump who was elected president in 2016 might actually start implementing what he promised. It is imperative that he pick someone for the Pentagon (and frankly, clear out the rest of his national security team) and appoint people he can trust and whose views comport with his own. Just lopping off a few heads won\u2019t suffice \u2013 he needs a full housecleaning.<\/p>\n In the meantime in Syria, watch for another \u201cAssad poison gas attack against his own people.\u201d The last time Trump said we\u2019d be\u00a0leaving Syria \u201cvery soon<\/a>\u201d was on March 29 of this year. Barely a week later, on April 7, came a supposed chemical incident in Douma, immediately hyped as a government attack on civilians\u00a0but soon apparent as likely staged<\/a>. Trump, though, dutifully took the bait,\u00a0tweeting that Assad was an \u201canimal.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0Putin, Russia, and Iran were \u201cresponsible\u201d for \u201cmany dead, including women and children, in mindless CHEMICAL attack\u201d \u2013 \u201cBig price to pay.\u201d He then for the second time launched cruise missiles against Syrian targets. A\u00a0confrontation loomed in the eastern Med<\/a>\u00a0that could to have led to war with Russia. Now, in light of Trump\u2019s restated determination to get out,\u00a0is MI6 already ginning up their White Helmet assets for a repeat<\/a>?<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s claim that the US has completed its only mission, to defeat ISIS, is being compared to George W. Bush\u2019s \u201cMission Accomplished\u201d banner following defeat of Iraq\u2019s army and the beginning of the occupation (and, as it turned out, the beginning of the real war). But if it helps get us out, who cares if Trump wants to take credit? Whatever his\u00a0terrible, horrible, no good, very bad national security team<\/a>\u00a0told him,\u00a0the US presence in Syria was never about ISIS. We are there as Uncle Sam’s Rent-an-Army for the Israelis and Saudis to block Iranian influence and especially an overland route between Syria and Iran<\/strong>\u00a0(the\u00a0so-called \u201cShiite land bridge\u201d to the Mediterranean<\/a>).<\/p>\n For US forces the war against ISIS was always a sideshow, mainly carried on by the Syrians and Russians and proportioned about like the war against the Wehrmacht: about 20% \u201cus,\u201d about 80% \u201cthem.\u201d The remaining pocket ISIS has\u00a0on the Syria-Iraq border has been deliberate<\/a>ly left alone, to keep handy as a lever to force Assad out in a settlement (which is not going to happen). Thus the claim an American pullout will\u00a0lead to an ISIS \u201cresurgence<\/a>\u201d is absurd. With US forces ceasing to play dog in the manger, the Syrians, Russians, Iranians, and Iraqis will kill them. All of them.<\/p>\n If Trump is able to follow through with the pullout, will the Syrian war wind down?<\/strong>\u00a0It needs to be kept in mind that the whole conflict has been because we (the US, plus Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, UAE, the United Kingdom, etc) are the aggressors. We sought to use al-Qaeda and other jihadis to effect regime change via the tried and true method. It failed.<\/p>\n Regarding Trump\u2019s critics\u2019 claim that he is turning over Syria to the Russians and Iranians, Assad is nobody’s puppet. He can be allied with a Shiite theocracy but not controlled by it; Iran, likewise, can also have mutually beneficial ties with an ideologically dissimilar country, like it does with Christian Armenia. The Russians will stay and expand their presence but unlike our presence in many countries \u2013 which seemingly never ends, for example in Germany, Japan, and Korea, not to mention Kosovo \u2013 they’ll be there only as long and to the extent the Syrians want them. (Compare our eternal occupations with the Soviets\u2019 politely leaving Egypt when Anwar Sadat asked them, or leaving Somalia when Siad Barre wanted them out. Instead of leaving, why didn\u2019t Moscow just do a \u201cDiem<\/a>\u201d on them?) It seems that American policymakers have gotten so far down the wormhole of their paranoid fantasies about the rest of the world \u2013 and it can’t be overemphasized, concerning areas where the US has\u00a0no actual national interests<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 that we no longer recognize classic statecraft when practiced by other powers defending genuine national interests (which of course are legitimate only to the extent we say so).<\/p>\n What happens over the next few days on funding for the Border Wall \u2013 which is\u00a0fully within the power of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to deliver<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 and over the next few weeks over Syria and Afghanistan may be decisive for the balance of the Trump presidency. If he can prevail, and if he finally starts\u00a0assembling an America First national security team<\/a>\u00a0beginning with a good Pentagon chief, he still has a chance to deliver on his 2016 promises.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Did Someone Slip Donald Trump Some Kind Of Political Viagra?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cosmicconvergence.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cosmicconvergence.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cosmicconvergence.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cosmicconvergence.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cosmicconvergence.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cosmicconvergence.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29515\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cosmicconvergence.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cosmicconvergence.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cosmicconvergence.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n\n
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