LEE SMITH: 10 Questions To Ask About Trump’s Removal Of Troops From Syria. “Trump’s critics appear to believe that backing a Marxist splinter group aligned with the anti-American, pro-Iranian axis in its war against a NATO ally is sound policy.”
The final question is the biggie: “How Could the U.S. Foreign Policy Establishment Get It So Wrong?”
Trump simply saw U.S. support for the PKK for what it was: America fighting and paying to advance the interests of someone else, in this case U.S. adversaries, like Iran, Assad, and Russia. The complaint of Trump critics that the withdrawal will, conversely, benefit all warring sides—Iran and ISIS, Ankara and Moscow, etc.—is impossible to reconcile with the logic of conflict.
That Trump’s withdrawal showed more strategic clarity than the foreign policy establishment is hardly surprising. He ran against Washington’s post-9/11 foreign policies in the Middle East, in particular novelty items like Bush’s freedom agenda and Obama’s Iran deal.
From Trump’s perspective, those policies defined the divide between the Beltway bubble and the rest of the U.S. public that saw no wisdom in enriching an Iranian regime at war or spending American lives and money to promote democracy in places like Iraq, Lebanon, or the Palestinian territories where elections were certain to empower anti-American forces.
Why, it’s almost as though the establishment doesn’t give a damn about American interests.