The Mattis resignation
I think this is bad news:
Trump tweeting that we are leaving Syria has rocked the world…there has been pushback to Trump regarding this decision. Syria, as we all know, has been a cluster from the get go. But now it seems that Trump’s decision was the last straw for Secretary of Defense James Mattis. This afternoon he submitted his resignation.
I have never been on board with Trump’s expressed tendency and desire to withdraw (prematurely, IMHO) from places where we’ve already expended a great deal of effort and blood. Syria is an exceptionally complex problem, and I think the withdrawal will leave a dangerous vacuum—and nature abhors a vacuum. Mattis seems to be saying as much, and he knows a great deal more about it than I do:
I believe we must be resolute and unambiguous in our approach to those countries whose strategic interests are increasingly in tension with ours. It is clear that China and Russia, for example, want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model – gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions – to promote their own interests at the expense of their neighbors, America and our allies. That is why we must use all the tools of American power to provide for the common defense.
Mattis had said this last May:
What we don’t want to do, now that we are on the cusp of winning on the battlefield in terms of taking down the physical caliphate, the geographic caliphate, we do not want to simply pull out before the diplomats have won the peace…So you win the fight, and then you win the peace.
Sounds pretty basic to me. It’s a lesson the Obama administration failed to learn (or wished to ignore), most notably in Iraq, and it’s one that Trump made clear in his campaign speeches that he hadn’t learned either.
More here:
The Turkish Defense Minister was already threatening to level a brutal assault on US-backed Kurdish allies and put them “in ditches” once the US pulled out. The remark set Mattis off. He had spent months trying to convince Trump that withdrawal was a bad idea and was now seeing early signs of what it could mean to US allies in the region.
A little past 3pm, Mattis was in the Oval Office, trying one last time to get Trump to change his mind about Syria. The meeting didn’t last very long. The President refused to budge, and so Mattis made the only remaining choice he felt he had left— he pulled out a two-page letter he’d brought with him and resigned on the spot. Though he wouldn’t be leaving immediately—Mattis will stay on until February— the decision was final.
Trump’s move doesn’t have a lot of support, although Stephen Hayward points out that it may help Trump in the 2020 election, and that:
…those on the left and right who cheer a shrinking American military footprint around the world give up their right to complain when the world becomes a more chaotic and violent place.
Indeed, they’ve given up their right to do it. But they haven’t given up doing it.
I repeat that this is an aspect of Trump of which I’ve always been very wary. I hope the predicted disaster doesn’t happen, but I fear it will.
Trump ordered this withdrawal via a tweet, without consulting Mattis, DoD, Congress, or the State Department. How is this even vaguely acceptable?
It’s not. That’s why the screams are coming from inside the White House. Rex Tilerrson for instance recently painted a picture of a President who is completely incompetent.
By most accounts, inducing Trump’s, he makes these decisions mostly on instinct. He does not read intelligence briefings and is unable or unwilling to learn. He does not keep a schedule, gets into the office around 10 or 11, plays tons of golf and watches TV all day.
There’s a reason Mattis thinks Trump is a 2 year old.
Manju:
If you actually read the links and the excerpt in my post, you’d know that Mattis and Trump had been discussing the Syria withdrawal and were at odds about it for many months. Trump made it clear to Mattis in their last meeting on the subject that his mind was made up to withdraw. So although Trump can easily be criticized for his decision—and I have done so here—to say that Trump did this without consulting Mattis is absurd.
Withdrawal of American troops from around the world is the one major policy position I disagree with President Trump on. Call me a neocon (although I’ve been a conservative since I was sixteen (AuH20, AuH20!.), but my foreign policy philosophy is based on that of John F. Kennedy: “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we will pay any price, meet any hardship, bear any burden, support any friend, oppose any foe, to ensure the survival and the success of liberty.”
Whether we like it or not, we are the world’s policeman, and this is no time for the “Blue Flu.” If we pull out our 2,000 troops (not even one full regiment!) we will allow Russian, Iranian, and Turkish troops to be sitting next to much of the world’s oil supply. Not a good idea. We will be abandoning our allies, the Kurds, who fought bravely next to us for years. The effect that will have on other allies is ineluctable. ISIS will be back, sure as hell. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yw8HycLbnM
Now, I agree that we should not get bogged down in nation-building, since we no longer have the stomach for what nation-building actually requires – decades of occupation, including control of the occupied country’s government, police, military, and educational systems. I also agree that our strategy in Afghanistan is wrong: notice that we defeated the Taliban in two weeks in 2001 using relatively low high-tech military power (70-year old B-52s, a few guys on the ground with laser pointers) but have now allowed the so-called “asymmetric” fighters (a misnomer if their ever was one) to draw us into a symmetrical, ground-based, slugfest with them.
That being said, contrary to what is constantly being repeated on TV, Afghanistan is not our longest war, not by a long shot. We fought the Amerindians for 150 years. It’s not even our longest occupation, if you call it that!.
I’m not trying to be callous, but the troops we have in Syria and Afghanistan, and in dozens of other places around the world, are not the 18-20 year old draftees of World War II. They are volunteers, professional soldiers, the same as the long-service cavalry and infantry troops stationed on the western frontier in the 19th Century. Particularly in the case of Syria, they are all Special Forces or their logistical support. It’s their mission, what they were trained for, to advise and support indigenous country forces. It’s what they want to do, are dedicated to doing. Trump should let them continue to do their job. Maybe, just maybe, something good will come out of it.
I have never been on board with Trump’s expressed tendency and desire to withdraw (prematurely, IMHO) from places where we’ve already expended a great deal of effort and blood.
neo: Likewise.
However, I do take the point that the US expends far more blood and treasure than others in these missions. Between the world which loves to hate us for our efforts and the Democrats who love to hamstring us for trying, it seems we’re caught in a double-bind which benefits no one, least of all dead American soldiers.
Richard Saunders, “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we will pay any price, meet any hardship, bear any burden, support any friend, oppose any foe, to ensure the survival and the success of liberty.”
After getting his head handed to him by Khuschov, JFK decided that to show him how tough we were upped our involvement in Viet Nam against the advice of Eisenhower and MacArthur, both five star generals and heroes of WWII. How’d that work out? Nope, JFK made an utterly irresponsible statement, one that lacked all judgement and wound up costing the US many lives and turned the our institutions upside down.
I never thought we should have entered this situation in the first place. I remember first reading about it, and wondered whether both sides could lose, since they both are dreadful. Someone posted (perhaps on Belmont Club or Ace’s) ‘well, at least we’ll now know who’s side we’re on’, a reference to us seeming to do things supporting each side at different times.
Yes, there will be chaos and violence, but there’s a price to pay for every action.
Paul in Boston: It’s so hard to know.
Maybe JFK’s proclamation was the right thing to say in 1961. The “peace in our time” approach to the Nazis had led to disaster. JFK had written his thesis, “Why England Slept,” which was later published as a book, so he had a commitment to that ideal.
I haven’t touched bottom on Vietnam, but I am aware there is a respectable school of thought that we had won that war and the Tet offensive was a desperate roll of the dice which failed … except it had ignited anti-war sentiment that the war was lost, which led to the withdrawal of American forces and eventually the ending of all support to South Vietnam.
JFK had written his thesis, “Why England Slept,” which was later published as a book, so he had a commitment to that ideal.
Actually, JFK had produced a jumble of material that Arthur Krock assembled into a thesis and then into a trade book. IIRC, papa Kennedy put it on the best seller list by having his minions by copies in bulk.
IMO it is past time to get out of Afghanistan. I am in favor of defending our interests, I am not in favor of getting bogged down in any situation that can not be decisively won. Syria and Afghanistan, and perhaps Yemen, are not winnable unless we mount an effort on par with our WW2 approach. America lost that fortitude after Korea and then Vietnam.
We’ve lost Mattis, but we still have Lindsey Graham — his latest tweets:
–Mr. President, we will never have partners in the future. Our nation is better than this. Please reevaluate the Syrian withdrawal strategy.
–America’s worst nightmare is to have reliable allies — like the Kurds who have fought so bravely against ISIS — abandoned and destroyed.
–As to the status of our Kurdish allies, the Administration has yet to tell the American people what happens to the Kurds – who fought so hard for us – when we leave. Is there a plan to protect our allies post withdrawal? Need answers now.
–Just heard White House spokesperson claim ISIS is defeated in Syria. According to all available information, thousands of ISIS fighters still remain and are lethal in Syria.
–Especially we must NOW hear from the Pentagon about the likelihood of the rise of ISIS and the fate of our Kurdish allies in Syria.
–It is imperative Congress hold hearings on withdrawal decision in Syria — and potentially Afghanistan — to understand implications to our national security.
Steve Hayward, no Trump lover, has a pretty good post on this.
But I wonder if Trump’s supposed lizard brain isn’t on to something about the politics of the matter. The conventional wisdom is that Trump won the key midwestern states in 2016 because of white working class anxieties over immigration and job loss (or just racism if you’re a leftist), but there is some evidence that Trump’s stands on ending America’s military commitments overseas may have played a significant role in his victory in the upper midwest.
Douglas Kriner, a political scientist at Boston University, and Francis Shen, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, posted a paper on the Social Science Research Network last year with the provocative title, “Battlefield Casualties and Ballot Box Defeat: Did the Bush-Obama Wars Cost Clinton the White House?” Here’s the abstract, with the most relevant parts highlighted:
The Washington crowd has no iron in this fire. Nobody has kids in Syria or Afghanistan. None of them see the casualties come back.
This may be the time to stop being the world’s policeman. Pax Britannica was done with the British Navy and a few colonial troops. The Mutiny was a problem but was soon over.
Peace in India was not officially declared until July 8, 1859. “War is at an end; Rebellion is put down; the Noise of Arms is no longer heard where the enemies of the State have persisted in their last Struggle;’ the Presence of large Forces in the Field has ceased to be necessary; Order is re-established; and peaceful Pursuits have everywhere been resumed.” So ran Lord Canning’s proclamation. The British in the subcontinent and at home began to breathe freely once again
There was nothing like machine guns to quell mutinies.
The way I remember it, “we” engaged Syria in the first place because the Sith took it into his head to bomb there; the way I remember it, that really was incomprehensible intervention. But I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to that, and the Great Frog knows I could be wrong.
In any case, we are where we are.
If “we” learned anything from the war in Iraq, surely it must be that having won the war one must stay on and win, or in that case keep, the peace. Which of course BHO abandoned right smart.
The SAME EXACT THING as happened in Viet Nam.
I agree with Richard Saunders above almost entirely. (Except maybe about the “world’s policeman”: only somewhat, and not, mostly, a matter of gratuitously throwing our weight around.)
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Ann: Thanks for the L.G. tweets. They make sense to me.
What do we have to gain from continuing to be the world’s police man?
Never mind the money right now. We’ve been footing the butcher’s bill in blood for decades and decades. And for that we’ve gotten a world that either hates us or leeches off of us. Or both. We’ve gotten countries, some even supposedly allies, who use the foreign entanglements to undermine our culture and our government.
And more importantly, how has that made the world any safer? Has it done so at all? I don’t think so.
I respect Mattis as a Marine. But Mattis, like Tillerson, like Sessions, doesn’t seem to want to implement the President’s agenda.
Why did he take take the job in the first place? Trump announced his intentions on this subject back during the campaign. And it was one of the reasons I voted for him.
I’d be happy with us pulling out of NATO. I’d be happier with us pulling out of the UN and bulldozing the building from our shores(a man can dream). I’d be happy with all American troops pulled back to the 50 states and a wall erected on the Mexican border. See how Korea shakes out and pull those troops back too if things work out. Let the US lick its wounds, deep ones, both physical and psychological. Regroup and be ready to rain hell down on whoever attacks us again, if they do so. Which of course they will.
Si vis pacem, para bellum. But that doesn’t mean starting wars under stupid, interventionist, nation building pretenses. Or being dragged into your ill advised ‘allies’ ill advised fights.
What a pathetic dishonest hypocrite is the paid troll manju. Did you ever give Trump credit for having troops in Syria, or for having Mattis as Defense Secretary in the first place? No you have spent two years screeching about Stormy Daniels and nonexistent “Russian collusion”. The criticism from Hillary is even more ludicrous. After her debacle in Benghazi the erratic and corrupt then-Secretary of State said “What difference does it make?” Trump may be right or he may be wrong about Syria but he takes national security far more seriously than any Democrat has done in decades.
With the caveat that Trump must replace Mattis with a Sec Defense with a deep understanding of our security needs, I’m entirely in favor of Sec. Mattis leaving. This article does a good job of explaining why.
“I think the withdrawal will leave a dangerous vacuum—and nature abhors a vacuum.”
Absolutely true.
“we do not want to simply pull out before the diplomats have won the peace…” SecDef. Mattis
Herein lies one of my primary objections to Mattis; he is in profound denial as to the inherent nature of Islam. ‘Diplomats’ can NEVER achieve a lasting peace with Islam. After 1400 years of incessant aggression, any historical and theological review of Islam makes that abundantly clear.
Islam is, beyond any other aspect, a totalitarian ideology. Totalitarian ideologies by definition find intolerable a permanent “live and let live” policy. Islam will when dominated assume quiescence, until it regains the strength needed to once again go on the offensive. That is a theological imperative, as Allah has repeatedly and directly commanded it in the Qur’an.
I too do not favor a policy of withdrawal but I favor even less a futile expenditure of men and treasure. The Left will not allow us to win and until we deal with that internal mortal threat, expenditures of our men and treasure will continue to be… futile.
huxley,
More than any other individual, Walter Cronkite is responsible for our withdrawal from Vietnam. In his reportage on Tet he knowing lied, giving trusting viewers (I was one) the strong impression that US troops had barely been able to fend off the attacks and that we were losing the war. Cronkite used his stellar reputation as leverage in swaying public opinion.
The US is not fighting against Islam in Syria. The least Islamic side is Assad’s, which the U.S. is opposed to.
“Winning” there will make not the slightest dent to Islam.
Plus the U.S. is a major ally of Saudi. If you are anti-extremists, that’s a much bigger worry.
Please share the argument for staying in Syria, and if you don’t mind, include a description of what we are working to accomplish and how we will know when we have done so.
Mattis may well be frustrated, and pissed at Trump.
Trump, though, has been elected President, Chief Executive, and Commander in Chief, Mattis hasn’t.
But, if Mattis was such a stellar, informed, tough, and wise leader, a patriot–doggedly doing the best he could for our nation–and he saw that Trump was making what were, in his judgement, serious mistakes in Foreign Policy and National Defense, wouldn’t the better course have been to stay in power, stay on as Secretary of Defense, where he could probably have had much more influence on events–and the President’s thinking–than Mattis will have as a civilian?
Is Mattis, outside of government, writing the odd book or editorial, speaking here and there, going to be more effective than Mattis was, and could possibly still be, as Secdef?
I doubt it.
Huxley, yes we had won the war. The Tet Offensive was a massive gamble by the North and the VC, which they lost disastrously. The Viet Cong were completely destroyed and never played a significant part in war again. But, and this is a big BUT, Walter Cronkite, after a visit to Viet Nam, came on the nightly news and declared the war lost despite all the evidence to the contrary. It was complete and utter garbage, fake news as our current President would say, but in those days Walter Cronkite was the voice of God, chief correspondent of the storied CBS News, and successor to the sainted Edward R. Murrow who made his name reporting from rooftops of London as the Luftwaffe bombed the city each night during the Blitz.
(You can probably find the radio broadcasts, This is London calling. They are very dramatic. The background to his reports has the sounds of the air raid sirens, bombs, and bombers. You are there and it’s scary as hell if you imagine yourself on that roof with him)
The war was always controversial, but once
Cronkite said it was lost the country turned decisively against it. We should all be thankful that there is nobody in the news business today who speaks with that kind of unquestioned authority and stature. Especially with the horribly degraded and partisan nature of the press.
Snow – I understand what you are saying about Mattis staying on to try and influence Trump going forward, but I respect him more for being willing to resign — and saying it’s because he can’t support the President’s policies — than to be like some former Cabinet secretaries who hang on until they get fired or their Prez leaves office, and then write tell-all books all about how brave they were in trying to influence their man, but he just wouldn’t listen to them, gosh darn it all, and boy did he screw it up!
For a view that maybe Trump isn’t screwing things up, and that he had good reasons for tweeting his decision, see J. E. Dyer here:
https://libertyunyielding.com/2018/12/20/trump-resets-his-strategic-position-with-an-announced-syria-pull-out/
The commentary at the Victory Girls post is mixed, but I liked this one:
Theo Moore says:
December 21, 2018 at 6:17 am
Is everyone quite sure that Trump did not bait the media/leftists into supporting the war they have been against for so long?
“The US is not fighting against Islam in Syria. The least Islamic side is Assad’s, which the U.S. is opposed to. Chester Draws
Assad is a client state of Iran and the Mullahs are decidedly Islamic. Make no mistake… in their actions and words, Iran’s Mullahs have consistently followed the path the Ayatollah Khomeini set forth.
“Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword!
The sword is the key to Paradise, which can be opened only for the Holy Warriors! There are hundreds of other [Qur’anic] psalms and Hadiths [sayings of the Prophet] urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all this mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim.”
“Should one permit an infidel to continue in his role as a Corrupter of the Earth, the moral suffering of the infidel will be all the worse. Should one kill the infidel, and this stops him from perpetrating his misdeeds, his death will be a blessing to him.”
“There is no room for play in Islam… It is deadly serious about everything.” Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
Assad does what the Mullahs direct him to do.
Yes, the US opposes Assad and, other than the Kurds, every other faction. But… the Kurds are simply another branch of Islam. Viewed by both the Shia and the Sunnis as heretics.
The Kurds are not an Islamic version of the Bahai. The Bahai faith is the reformation that Islam rejected. Bahá’u’lláh proclaimed himself to be a Manifestation of God and was rejected by the Muslims.
Ha – Theo at VG’s was right!
https://spectator.us/adults-trump-childish/
“Predictably, the neo-con fraternity has its collective knickers in a twist over Mattis’s announced departure. Max Boot, who is always good for a laugh these days, epitomized the angst in some recent tweets. ‘Jim Mattis is gone,’ he said in one. ‘God help America. And the world.’ But then it has been obvious for some time that for Max the criterion of a good decision is that it was not taken by Donald Trump.
For example, when the President announced a couple of days back that he was withdrawing American troops from Syria — thus taking another step towards fulfilling his campaign promise to extricate America from needless foreign entanglements — Max skirled that the decisions was ‘a giant Christmas gift to our enemies.’ But one wag pointed out that it was not so long ago that Max said the opposite, insisting ‘Trump can’t do anything right — we don’t need troops in Syria.’ Okee-doke. I am not sure if that is Walt-Whimanesque logic (‘Do I contradict myself? Very well I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes’) or something out of the more recondite precincts of Hegelian dialectic where, the sage of Berlin told us, ‘X = not-X.’ Whatever the explanation, Max’s pirouettes do put us on notice about what to expect from those NeverTrump quarters.”
It seems to me that Boot is one of those Neocon-descendants who believes himself entitled to make the decisions in foreign policy, elections notwithstanding; he just doesn’t have a coherent policy, as the original Neocons did.
Huxley, yes we had won the war.
Paul in Boston: Glad we agree!
However, your earlier point called out Vietnam as an example of failure negating JFK’s Great Commission to “bear any burden” etc.
If that war had been a victory, even though Eisenhower and MacArthur advised against it, would that affect your assessment?
That said, be assured I’ve always appreciated your comments here and not just because I once lived in Boston! (Kenmore Square to be specific, when the rents were far more reasonable.)
It matters not so much of what will happen because of withdrawal, but the perception of what happens. With the default anti-Trump media, that has already been written.
I suspect that much of Trump’s decisions must first and last be filtered through his mammon-oriented mind. “How much does this cost?” is always high on that list.
Assad does what the Mullahs direct him to do.
Yes, the US opposes Assad and, other than the Kurds, every other faction. But… the Kurds are simply another branch of Islam. Viewed by both the Shia and the Sunnis as heretics.
The Kurds are not an Islamic version of the Bahai. The Bahai faith is the reformation that Islam rejected. Bahá’u’lláh proclaimed himself to be a Manifestation of God and was rejected by the Muslims.
Well said and true. I see some talk about bringing Kurds here as asylum refugees. They are every bit as intolerant Muslims as Sunni or Shia. There was a beautiful Kurdish girl in Sweden murdered by her father because she dressed
“Western.”
What we see is a civil war within Islam. Not our problem. Bush I set off Gulf War I because he feared Saddam would invade Saudi Arabia if we did not intervene after Kuwait. In 1991, oil was a critical issue for us. Now, we are exporting oil for the first time since the 70s.
9/11 happened because we were in Saudi after Gulf War I. We had gotten entangled in the Islamic civil war.
I hope Trump can get us unentangled.
Andy McCarthy has a column today on the same topic.
Unlike my colleagues, I’ve been a bemused spectator during this week’s Syria follies. As readers of these columns know (see, e.g., here, here, here, here, and here), I believe the United States has less interest in Syria than in the persistence of drought in Burkina Faso. That is why I was a steadfast naysayer on American intervention in a conflict among rivals whose common ground consists of hatred for America and affinity for sharia supremacism (and the abetting thereof — I’m looking at you, Vladimir).
“I suspect that much of Trump’s decisions must first and last be filtered through his mammon-oriented mind. “How much does this cost?” is always high on that list.” DonL
Mammon-oriented mind? Quite a contradiction given his support for the wall… In addition, as President he’s not spending his money on those policies and proposals he supports. But why let reason and logic stand in the way of bias?
The Kurds are not tolerant Westerners, but nevertheless they are generally more tolerant than many other Muslims in the Middle East. For example, see this about the Iraqi Kurds. That said, I doubt the Kurds are particularly unitary, either—although they are part of the same group, Kurds in Iraq may be different from Kurds in Turkey, etc.
Per Geoffrey,
Cf.:
Well, we certainly don’t have national unity on either Mattis or Syria.
I can look at some website’s posts and get three different viewpoints on each, at least (American Thinker was like that yesterday; National Review is another battlefront, as McCarthy says).
Even the “experts” don’t agree on what’s “best” because their conclusions depend on the assumptions and desired endpoints they bring to the table.
I didn’t see this linked yet (at least, not in clear); definitely on the “good riddance” side in re Mattis. So, the proof of the pudding is not just in the eating, but whose recipe book you want to use.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/12/mattis_was_no_good.html
Back to McCarthy’s no-nonsense conclusion:
“There is nothing for America in Syria. We haven’t defeated ISIS by taking its territory, and it wouldn’t matter if we did because sharia-supremacist culture guarantees that a new ISIS will replace the current one. The names change, but the enemy remains the same. And if you want to fight that enemy in an elective war, the Constitution demands that the people give their consent through their representatives in Congress.”
The Turkish phone call has been mentioned as dispositive of Trump caving to Erdogan, but this report is not clear about that.
Maybe he just called to let him know what was coming.
Agreeing, or announcing?
Open to spin from the anonymous sources; let’s not start believing everything we read in print just yet.
https://apnews.com/ec2ed217357048ff998225a31534df12”
“Trump stunned his Cabinet, lawmakers and much of the world with the move by rejecting the advice of his top aides and agreeing to a withdrawal in a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last week, two U.S. officials and a Turkish official briefed on the matter told The Associated Press.
“In no uncertain terms, reporting throughout this story is not true,” National Security Council spokesman Garrett Marquis said. “It is clear from the context that this false version of events is from sources who lack authority on the subject, possibly from unnamed sources in Turkey.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/white-house-says-erdogan-promised-trump-he-d-finish-isis-n951296
“Although a senior Trump administration official who briefed reporters last week said that Trump merely informed Erdogan of his plans with withdraw, other U.S. officials as well as Turkish officials have told NBC News that Trump agreed to pull out of Syria during the call after Erdogan argued that with ISIS nearly defeated, there was no need for U.S. troops to stay.”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/trump-call-with-turkish-president-led-to-decision-to-withdraw-troops-from-syria
“Before the call with Erdogan, Trump was advised to clearly oppose Turkish incursion into northern Syria, the aides said, adding that “the talking points were very firm.”
With Erdogan still on the call, Trump asked national security adviser John Bolton, who was on the line, why U.S. troops were still in Syria if the Turkish president was claiming the Turks could deal with the remaining Islamic State militants.
Erdogan told Trump that the group had been 99 percent defeated.
According to the aides, Trump quickly pledged to withdraw, which shocked both Bolton and Erdogan, who warned Trump against a hasty withdrawal.”
[so, because Trump had apparently already preferred to do something which his advisers opposed, that is equivalent to “caving” to Erdogan, who seems to have validated some of Trump’s reasoning but not talked him into it from a position of opposition on Trump’s part. That is, he enrolled Erdogan as a data-point, not a decision-maker]
This is the fullest account I’ve seen to date, with all the appropriate hyper-ventilating spin adjectives, but it sounds like Erdogan was just the final, um, tip of the Hershey kiss, which his advisers in the US had broken off, to make a lousy analogy.
https://nypost.com/2018/12/21/trump-decided-to-pull-us-troops-out-of-syria-during-phone-call-with-turkey/
“The purpose of the Dec. 14 call, arranged by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, was to persuade Erdogan to back off on this threat to attack Syria’s Kurdish fighters, according to a detailed AP report Friday.
But the Turkish president turned the tables on the commander-in-chief, reminding him that he had repeatedly said the only reason US troops were in Syria was to defeat ISIS, and that the terrorists had lost 99 percent of their territory.
“Why are you still there?” Erdogan asked Trump, telling him that the Turks could deal with the remaining ISIS militants, one administration official said.
With Erdogan on the line, Trump turned to Bolton and demanded to know why US troops remained in Syria if what the Turkish president said was true.
Erdogan’s point, Bolton was forced to admit, had been backed up by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Pompeo, US special envoy for Syria Jim Jeffrey and special envoy for the anti-ISIS coalition Brett McGurk, who all had said that ISIS retained just 1 percent of its territory.
Bolton stressed, however, that the entire national security team agreed that victory over ISIS had to be enduring, which meant more than taking away its territory.
But Trump was not impressed, according to the officials, who said the president quickly capitulated to the Turkish strongman by pledging to withdraw, shocking Bolton — and Erdogan.
Caught off guard, Erdogan then cautioned Trump against a hasty withdrawal, noting that while Turkey had made incursions into Syria in the past, it did not have the necessary forces on the border to move in and hold the large swaths of northeastern Syria where US troops are positioned.
The call ended with Trump repeating to Erdogan that the US would pull out, but offering no specifics on how it would be done, leaving top national security officials in shock.
Pompeo, Mattis, Bolton and other members of the national security team had prepared a detailed list of talking points to help Trump tell Erdogan to back off.
“The talking points were very firm,” said one of the officials, explaining that Trump was advised to clearly oppose a Turkish incursion into northern Syria and suggest the US and Turkey work together to address security concerns.
“Everybody said push back and try to offer [Turkey] something that’s a small win, possibly holding territory on the border, something like that.”
SEE ALSO
Donald Trump and James Mattis walking in the East Room of the White House
Mattis reportedly quit after Trump refused to reverse Syria decision
But the officials said Trump, who had previously accepted such advice and convinced the Turkish leader not to attack the Kurds and put US troops at risk, ignored the script and caved to Erdogan.”
[lengthy to give the full flavor; if Trump “caved” to Erdogan, that was a surprise to the Turk as well. To repeat: accepting one course of operation over another is not necessarily CAVING to either side, particularly since we don’t know what Trump’s actual personal opinion was before the call, we only know what people ADVISED him to do (and everyone always seems to think that Trump is going to follow their advice, until he doesn’t]
Has anyone leaked a transcript of the call to Turkey yet?
Also, McCarthy goes along with the pundit lemmings in calling his withdrawal abrupt, but other articles I’ve seen say that the announcement may have been abrupt, but the withdrawal had been under discussion.
PS sure looks to me like a bunch of new-generation-neo-cons looking to impose their elite entitlement to rule over the decision of the elected President.
PPSS As an aside, this is a prime example of Trump’s management / leadership style, as discussed in theis piece from American Thinker.
IMO, the public that voted for him caught on to this, without necessarily being able to articulate it so nicely, and wanted someone wililng to make decisions without passing every jot and tittle through a committee.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/12/what_makes_trump_run.html#ixzz5aMjDHUnP
[run as in operate, not campaign]
RTWT, but here is the opening.
December 21, 2018
What Makes Trump Run
By Robert Weissberg
“It is an understatement to say that many Americans, particularly mass-media pundits, are baffled by President Trump’s “polarizing” behavior. There has never been any public figure quite like him: a president who speaks his mind so forcefully, often impolitely, while acting impetuously.
Let me suggest that Trump’s behavior is perfectly understandable if viewed in the context of his business background. As the Obama administration reflected governance by an egalitarian community activist, the current administration is rule by a hotel magnate.
This observation reflects my first-hand experience. Beginning in the late 1950s until the mid-1970s my father owned multiple large hotels (most with bars and restaurants) in New York City, Chicago, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Palm Beach, Fl, Puerto Rico, New Orleans, and elsewhere. Unlike Trump, he had stockholders but, very much like Trump, he exercised power as an unchallenged boss, able to fire anybody in an instant for whatever reason no matter how flimsy.”
Let me suggest that Trump’s behavior is perfectly understandable if viewed in the context of his business background.
Conrad Black has a book about Trump that is interesting. He owned the Chicago Sun Tim es and was going to term model or rebuild the headquarters building own the river. It was a prime location. Trump got involved in the deal and built a new building. I have seen it but suspect he used the air space for a hotel.
Black began very suspicious of Trump because of his media reputation but concluded that everything was completed as promised and on budget.
The abrupt reversals by so many people on their views on foreign interventions has truly been a sight to behold. And also remember when having a military man at the head of the Defense dept. was some scary thing. That was two years ago. Now that same military man leaving is freaking out some of the same people.
Mike K – one of the things that swung me to Trump was the video of his meeting with the UN people on their remodeling (July 2005; lots of hits on the internet search).
He seemed very reasonable to me, respectful but not deferential, straight-forward and rather blunt that their existing proposal was priced way too high, and the methodology of moving everyone out, remodel, and move back was inefficient and costly.
He offered to do the job for much less, and forego his own fee (take that with a grain of salt; there are ways of making money without ever making a profit, cf Hollywood, but he is serving as President without a salary, see below).
I thought he sounded quite rational, and that was enough against Hillary.
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpometer/promise/1341/take-no-salary/
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-donate-salary-va/
This last one is a brave attempt by Snopes to smear Trump, but they admit he has donated his salary to different organizations as promised, just not to THIS cause, which was claimed by anonymous sources — not the WH — and tweeted around the internet. So guess which part of the analysis made the headlines.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-salary-military-cemeteries/
To recap:
AesopFan on December 21, 2018 at 10:35 pm at 10:35 pm said:
The commentary at the Victory Girls post is mixed, but I liked this one:
Theo Moore says:
December 21, 2018 at 6:17 am
Is everyone quite sure that Trump did not bait the media/leftists into supporting the war they have been against for so long?
* *
Not only did Max Boot fall into the trap, so did Noam Chomsky.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/12/loose-ends-58.php
“I’m starting to think Trump really is a stable genius. Or that he’s actually is playing eight-dimensional chess. Because if the Middle East completely falls apart, you just might see the Mother of All American Interventions. And Chomsky will approve! It was a neocon plot all along, and the left has fallen for it.”
Steve Walsh —
“Please share the argument for staying in Syria, and if you don’t mind, include a description of what we are working to accomplish and how we will know when we have done so.”
1. Counter Russian influence.
2. Counter Iranian influence.
3. Counter Turkish influence. (Please don’t tell me Turkey is a NATO member and thus presumptively our ally. That ended very early on in Erdogan’s regime.)
4. Counter Jihadism.
5. Be an honorable ally.
The short answer to your last question is not for a long, long time. All the countries involved are hostile to our interests. Islam is in a permanent state of war against the infidels — us. The war has just been in a hudna — hiatus to gain strength — for 350 years. Now it’s back on.
2,000 Special Forces is not a war. It’s the Great Game all over again. You may not like that, but that’s the reality of the 21st Century. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.
I’m OK with getting out of Syria but, much more important, is getting out of Afghanistan. Looking at my comment above, the combination of a new keyboard and a wildly out of control autocorrect, makes them almost illegible.
I’m sorry but “The Great Game” was 150 years ago.
The hysteria over this is so over the top. Secretary of Defense (War) has always been a job with lots of turnover for numerous presidents.
And the newfound appreciation for Mattis from the left/media is sickening. Where was their outrage when Obama unceremoniously fired him in 2013. That’s right they couldn’t have cared less. The more I think of it that letter he released was very childish and counterproductive of someone who supposedly cares about these policies.
He did exactly what Trump is accused of (often correctly) doing. He is only increasing the odds of the things he disagrees with happening.
Jeez, I hate this entire environment in this country right now.
Recent presidents and number of S. of D.
Obama-4 (none lasting more than approx. 2 years)
GWB-2
Clinton-3
GHWB-1
More trivia: the only president that served a full term in office without a single change in his cabinet was?
Franklin Pierce 1853-1857. Including War Secretary and future Confederate president Jefferson Davis.
I think the bigger issue here with a lot of the cabinet turnover is we had three precipitating factors.
1. A president with no experience in government and no reliable allies to help him pick the right people for his vision. Which leads to points 2 and 3.
2. Therefore he named people that he thought would push HIS agenda above their own.
3. While at the same time some of his nominees took the approach that they could convince an inexperienced president to follow their agenda and not his own.
And in the end he was elected and they weren’t so they be gone.
Rand Paul loves the President’s pullout from Syria. I assume he’s, at best, ambivalent about Mattis’s resulting resignation. Now, miffed further by the Secretary’s stated frankness, King Baby Trump wants him gone by Jan.1st. Infantile Defiance on Speed.
All this makes me CRAZY.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/12/name-that-senator.php
“Gillibrand and Trump might be the only politicians in Washington who don’t think Mattis should be Secretary of Defense.”
And that is the end of the line on this topic.
Or maybe not:
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/trump-boots-mattis-as-defense-secretary-ahead-of-schedule.html
“When James Mattis published his resignation letter this week, he anticipated staying on until February 28 to allow for a smooth transition and a thorough vetting process for the next Secretary of Defense. But smooth and thorough aren’t the driving standards of the Trump administration: on Sunday, Trump decreed by tweet that Mattis would be out as of January 1, and that his deputy Patrick Shanahan will assume the title of Acting Defense Secretary. Aides report that Trump had not realized how scathing Mattis’s resignation was until TV news explained its contents.”
I doubt Trump is that stupid. And what does that say about his aides?
Mattis only had to write the one paragraph about the President deserving a DefSec who could support his policies. Wading into the weeds the way he did almost dared Trump to push back; maybe the President didn’t want to make a big deal out of the resignation, as in his original response, but the news pundits forced him into it.
(That’s the view from the Trump Bubble, just because the other views are 99.44% negative.)
In any case, Mattis can’t diss his boss publicly that way and expect to stay on board.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2018/12/21/the-mattis-resignation/#comment-2416650
“Mattis clashed with Trump over a host of issues — including Iran; Russia; Syria; the wisdom of using the military to police the southern border; Trump’s ban on transgender troops; and most prominently the president’s denigration of historic military allies and diplomatic and trade partners.
As a trusted lieutenant, however, Shanahan, 56, has played a prominent role in crafting a new National Defense Strategy placing renewed emphasis on military competition with Russia and China — a document that Mattis considers one of his major accomplishments.
But Shanahan has also been the Pentagon’s biggest booster for Trump’s proposal for a separate Space Force, which is now in its final stages before going to Congress in early 2019.
Here’s a rundown of some issues Shanahan has wrestled with in recent months and how his nomination to be deputy secretary was a bit choppy:”
There is a vast difference between being President of a country or a corporation, and being a General in our military. Two generals have learned this recently. President Eisenhower was the only military leader to do both fairly successfully, although why he didn’t stop the N. Korean war with a small nuke is bewildering, much less Nixon with the Viet Nam war saving 50K U.S. lives. In Vietnam “body count” was kept and publicized a daily. And today “body count”, i.e. Covid-19 deaths again are kept and are a major statistic on TV daily. How stupid is that? It’s just politics as usual. Trump is learning that doctors with PHD’s are not managers either.