Are “Friendlies” Alone with U.S. Troops Out Of Syria?

During the 2016 presidential campaign, one of the promises Candidate Trump made to Americans was to get the U.S. out of Syria and to not get involved militarily in foreign countries going forward. He famously put it this way:  “I’m not, and I don’t want to be, the president of the world.” So why all the uproar from those on the Left and some on the Right for his recent announcement he was going to pull the last 2000+ members of the American military still in Syria out?

Media Uproar

Who has been surprised to see the constant attacks from the Media with not only the President’s announcement to pull out of Syria but the forced resignation of Secretary of Defense Mattis? They don’t care about Trump’s campaign promises to do so. They don’t care that former President Obama fired Mattis, but didn’t even bother to call the General to fire him. At least Trump met with Mattis multiple times and the Secretary knew of the military strategy disagreement with President Trump. Obama didn’t even do that.

How ridiculous are Mainstream Media members about this? Max Boost of the Washington Post who has been a constant attacker of all-things-Trump illustrated just how ridiculous the MSM is. In April of 2018, he ridiculed the President for the U.S. even having a military presence in Syria. Then in December, he railed against the announcement the President made about pulling ground troops out of Syria.

Can President Trump do anything right?

The answer to that — at least according to the Media is a resounding, “No!”

That strike against Syria prompted the tweet from the Washington Post columnist the next day (shown in the graphic). What’s the point we are reaching to express? Keep reading!

Remember this from April of 2017?

“Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the air base in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched,” Mr. Trump said in remarks at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. “It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons.”

“Years of previous attempts at changing Assad’s behavior have all failed, and failed very dramatically,” the president said, referring to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. “As a result, the refugee crisis continues to deepen, and the region continues to destabilize, threatening the United States and its allies.” The cruise missiles struck the airfield beginning around 8:40 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday, and the strikes continued for three to four minutes.

Mattis Media “Matters”

Defense secretaries come and go.  President Obama had four of them in eight years, who had some unkind things to say about his leadership or lack of it.  There was no talk of chaos or of the only adult in the room leaving. Suddenly, the media are in a meltdown after “Mad Dog” Mattis announced his departure from the Cabinet after President Trump announced our departure from Syria:

Foreign Policy Pentagon reporter Lara Seligman wrote the press corp [sic] is contemplating suicide over Mattis’ resignation, “I think I speak for all national security reporters tonight when I say I’m about ready to jump off a cliff. But at least I already wrote the “who will replace Mattis” story two months (only two months?????) ago[.”]

President Trump is just now completing his first two years as President. Mattis has been Secretary of Defense from the beginning. It is NOT unusual for Presidents to have and make Cabinet changes quite often. The Mattis change is NOT unusual for ANY president to make. And Mattis made it clear in his letter of resignation that he was leaving for “fundamental” differences with President Trump on foreign military actions — specifically on the pending drawdown of troops from Syria.

As this report for you is being prepared, the American media and much of the World were surprised to hear that the President and Mrs. Trump paid a secret visit to U.S. troops in Iraq the day after Christmas. This trip and the media’s response to it are humorous to me. I watched last week as the President’s troop withdrawal plan was released as NBC blasted the President not only for the troop withdrawal from Syria but the fact that President Trump had not visited any troops on foreign soil. NBC reported that this way:

“On Christmas Day, President Donald Trump took part in a long-running practice of presidents who called troops stationed around the country and the world. But he broke from a recent tradition of actually visiting troops and wounded warriors. He did so in 2017 when he visited wounded troops at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Dec. 21 (and invited Coast Guard service members to play golf at his course in West Palm Beach, Florida). By staying home on Tuesday, Trump became the first president since 2002 who didn’t visit military personnel around Christmastime.”

I cannot wait to see who says what in a negative fashion about the President’s trip. You can bet he will get NO media credit for the trip!

Summary

The bottom line is this: no matter what this President does or does NOT do regarding the American military, the Mainstream Media will demean him. Oh, how horrible it is to withdraw from Syria. They make it sound like we’ve had tens of thousands of troops there for years and that our ground forces leaving Syria will leave millions of Syrians in harm’s way. “ISIS is there and will slaughter them all!” Or “President Assad will gas his own citizens now that America is gone!” The MSM makes it seem in all their reporting that the U.S. has had thousands of troops on the ground and even have military bases there. What they do NOT talk about is U.S. military capabilities when those tens of thousands of ground troops and the HUGE military infrastructure put in place in Syria are pulled out!

Wait….how many troops do we have on the ground in Syria? Let’s turn to the Washington Post that gave us the dire consequences of the pending massive U.S. troop pullout of Syria:

U.S. troop withdrawal from Syria is ‘a dream come true for the Iranians’

One of the biggest winners of President Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria will be Iran, which can now expand its reach across the Middle East with Washington’s already waning influence taking another hit.

The abrupt reversal of U.S. policy regarding its small military presence in a remote but strategically significant corner of northeastern Syria has stunned U.S. allies, many of whom were counting on the Trump administration’s seemingly tough posture on Iran to reverse extensive gains made by Tehran in recent years.

Instead, the withdrawal of troops opens the door to further Iranian expansion, including the establishment of a land corridor from Tehran to the Mediterranean that will enhance Iran’s ability to directly challenge Israel. It also throws in doubt Washington’s ability to sustain its commitment to other allies in the region and could drive many of them closer to Russia, an Iranian ally, analysts say.

“This is a dream come true for the Iranians,” said Riad Kahwaji, who heads the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, a defense consultancy in Dubai. “No longer will Iran take the Trump administration seriously. It’s an isolationist administration, it will no longer pose a threat, and Iran will become bolder in its actions because they know this administration is more bark than bite.”

A top Iranian official gloated Friday that the United States has admitted failure in its attempts to “overrun” the Middle East, according to Iran’s Tasnim News Agency.

“The Americans have come to the conclusion that they can exercise power neither in Iraq and Syria nor in the entire region,” said Brig. Gen. Mohammad Pakpour, the commander of ground forces of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, at a news conference in Tehran. The most immediate impact will be in Syria, where U.S. troops have been serving as a buffer against Iranian expansion throughout the country as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — backed by Iranian-trained and funded militias consolidates control over areas that rebelled against him in 2011. The area in northeastern Syria where most of an estimated 2,000 U.S. troops are based is now up for grabs, with both Turkey and the Syrian government vying for control.

Here’s the Truth about the U.S. troop withdrawal from Syria:

  • We have just a little over 2000 troops in Syria;
  • It is doubtful that Iran would attempt to overrun Syria with their own troops while U.S. forces are there. But knowing the U.S. commitment to Syria, it is doubtful that the withdrawal will open the door to the Iranians;
  • How long if needed will it take for the U.S. to deploy and activate troops BACK to Syria if needed? According to experts, it would take no more than 24-48 hours to do so;
  • What could the U.S. do in Syria during that 1-2 day period to get ground troops back? The U.S. could duplicate what it did to Syrian and Russian troops in 2017 to stop the gassing by Assad. NBC News reported this about U.S. action against Assad in April of 2017:

    The United States fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Syria overnight in response to what it believes was a chemical weapons attack that killed more than 100 people. At least six people were killed, Syria claimed, but the Pentagon said civilians were not targeted and the strike was aimed at a military airfield in Homs. All but one of the missiles hit their intended target, one U.S. military official told NBC News. The other missile failed. The missiles were fired from the destroyers Porter and Ross in the eastern Mediterranean.” The U.S. decimated Syria without a single person on the ground when that very effective missile strike took place. That or a similar attack could be initiated in a matter of hours.

The bottom line is this: no matter what the President does or does not do, he will NEVER satisfy his detractors. And the mouthpieces of the Democrat Party — the Mainstream Media — will never give the President credit for ANY accomplishment. So why wouldn’t the President simply do what he promised Americans during his 2016 campaign that he would do?

Wait a minute: U.S. Presidents are not supposed to do what they promise during campaigns. So why would President Trump feel any obligation to keep any of his promises?

 

 

 

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