What are America’s Limited Interests in Syria in 2018?

“Emotions should not be allowed to overrule what the president has thought and expressed many times: while the outcome of Syria’s civil war may mean everything to Assad, and much to Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Israel, it means comparatively little to a USA 5,000 miles away,” writes Pat Buchanan in The American Conservative. Buchanan rightfully asks: “What are America’s limited interests in Syria in 2018?” And continues here:

Containing al-Qaeda, exterminating the ISIS caliphate, and effecting the best deal we can for the Kurds who have been loyal and crucial to our campaign against ISIS.

As for the political future of Syria, it is not vital to us and not ours to determine. And the efforts of others to have us come fight their wars, while understandable, need to be resisted.

All over this city, and across the Middle East, there are people who wish to conscript U.S. wealth and power to advance their goals and achieve their visions. Having let them succeed so often has diminished us as a superpower from what we were at the end of the Cold War.

This should stop, and the nation knows it.

Is it not ironic that today our War Party, which, almost to a man, loathed Trump and rejected his candidacy, is goading and cheering him on, deeper and deeper into the Syrian quagmire?

If investigators determine that Assad’s forces used poison gas on civilians in Douma, Trump will have to decide whether to repeat the strike he made on Syria a year ago, and, this time, risk war with Russia.