Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq: Withdraw Military and Terminate Economic Aid

U.S. Army Cpl. Bruce Sexton, a combat medic with Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division, takes part in Operation Buffalo Thunder II in the district of Shorabak, Afghanistan, June 28, 2012. During the eight-day mission, Afghan and American forces cleared more than 120 kilometers of terrain and escorted about 60 truckloads of humanitarian aid for distribution to the people of Shorabak. (DoD photo by Staff Sgt. Brendan Mackie, U.S. Army/Released)

The former head of the CIA’s bin Laden unit, Michael Scheuer, suggests that now, as the fighting in Syria winds down and a peace agreement in Afghanistan lies within sight, is a good time for America to pull back from the “interventionist political meddling, military invasions, and hectoring cultural incursions in the Islamic world.” He writes at his blog non-intervention.com (abridged):

Now is the time for the Trump administration to announce with a flourish that because of both the Islamic State’s enormous loss of territory in Iraq and Syria, and the budding peace process in Afghanistan the U.S. government recognizes that its task has been completed and that all U.S. forces will be withdrawn from, and all economic aid to those nation-states and the non-state forces in each, will be terminated by 31 December 2018.

Such a statement has a modicum of truth — IS lost the territory and the Afghan ceasefire has made always-wrong diplomats giddy with what they deem the approach of peace — but its main goal would be to get the republic out of three theaters of war that will stay such for decades to come.

By defusing the Islamists’ motivation to attack U.S. interests — thereby allowing the focused application of resources against their main enemies, Arab tyrants and Israel — and exploiting the republic’s great gift of geographical remoteness from Islamist forces, the Trump administration can concentrate on getting America’s bacon out of the growing Islamist fire in Africa, and the nascent one that is, with China’s indispensable if brain-dead help, beginning to catch hold in Asia.

Americans are still paying the ungodly and unnecessary price, in terms of the lives and money, that have been expended in their governing elite’s interventionist political meddling, military invasions, and hectoring cultural incursions in the Islamic world. These wounds demand a cauterization that would end the republic’s bleeding, and then a strict application of non-interventionism that will prevent them being reopened.