“President Obama had called on the two former Presidents to help with the situation in Haiti. During their public remarks in the Rose Garden, President Clinton had said about President Bush, ‘I’ve already figured out how I can get him to do some things that he didn’t sign on for.’ Later, back in the Oval, President Bush is jokingly asking President Clinton what were those things he had in mind.” (Official White House photo by Pete Souza)
Pat Buchanan reminds readers in The American Conservative that President Trump is facing inherited problems in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Syria. Neocons blasting the president for pulling out of Syria and reducing troop numbers in Afghanistan are the same crowd who led America into the Middle East in 2001 and 2004 with no plan for victory, no proper estimate of the cost in lives and treasure, and no solid philosophical reasoning on how such an adventure would benefit Americans.
The same set of big military industrial complex cheerleaders persuaded President Obama to remain in the Middle East, despite a big part of his voter base giving him their support in response to his promises to bring troops home.
Pat writes:
The fruits of American intervention?
We are told ISIS is not dead but alive in the hearts of tens of thousands of Muslims, that if we leave Syria and Afghanistan our enemies will take over and our friends will be massacred, and that if we stop helping Saudis and Emiratis kill Houthis in Yemen, Iran will notch a victory.
In his decision to leave Syria and withdraw half of the 14,000 troops in Afghanistan, Trump enraged our foreign policy elites, though millions of Americans cannot get out of there soon enough.
In Monday’s editorial celebrating major figures of foreign policy in the past half-century, The New York Times wrote, “As these leaders pass from the scene, it will be left to a new generation to find a way forward from the wreckage Mr. Trump has already created.”
Correction: make that “the wreckage Mr. Trump inherited.”
Read more here.
