It’s ridiculous the U. S. has 26,000 military personnel in South Korea 65 years after the Korean War and 54,000 in Japan 73 years after World War II.
Donald Trump has been complaining for years about the promiscuous use of American military personnel. Two weeks ago, he did something about it, announcing the withdrawal of 2,000 troops from Syria and 7,000 from Afghanistan.
Republicans joined Democrats in condemning Trump for acting impulsively, sowing “chaos” and precipitating a “national security crisis.” But it’s the president’s overwrought critics who are making choices without thinking, driven by the momentum of military mistakes to support open-ended commitments that make no sense.
The U. S. intervention in Syria’s civil war was never authorized by Congress, and its aims were nebulous. A few months ago, Trump’s national security adviser was saying American forces would stay in Syria as long as Iran or its proxies are operating there — in other words, indefinitely.
U. S. troops have been in Afghanistan for 17 years, and the Taliban occupy more territory than at any time since the 2001 invasion, notwithstanding the 3,500 reinforcements that Trump reluctantly approved in 2017. The withdrawal Trump has in mind would reverse that surge and then some, leaving 7,000 troops in a country the U. S. should have left long ago.
Trump’s decision to stop American involvement in one endless war and curtail it in another provoked the resignation of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, which tells you something about the “adults in the room” — those who supposedly were protecting the country from an erratic, ignorant president’s worst instincts.
