President Trump's Middle East Policy Is Right for Today's World

TODAY, THE NEWS IS ALL MATTIS AND SYRIA AND TRUMP. Let's start with Mattis -- or rather McGurk. • • • THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA STRIKES AGAIN. This time is it in making a huge mountain out of the resignation of Brett McGurk, US special envoy to the global anti-ISIS coalition. Fox news, ABC, the Guardian, the BBC, the National, and other outlets had already stealth-reported the corroborated rumor that McGurk was planning to resign in February. Nice going with the Fake News propagandist mainstream media making it seem like McGurk was planning to stay in his job forever, when he was actually planning to resign long before the Mattis resignation. • • • TRUMP NAMES MATTIS REPLACEMENT. Fox News broke the story on Sunday afternoon when Gregg Re reported that : "President Trump announced Sunday that Defense Secretary James Mattis will be leaving the administration on January 1, weeks earlier than planned and just days after Mattis' bombshell resignation letter made clear his policy disagreements with the White House. 'I am pleased to announce that our very talented Deputy Secretary of Defense, Patrick Shanahan, will assume the title of Acting Secretary of Defense starting January 1, 2019,' Trump wrote on Twitter Sunday morning. 'Patrick has a long list of accomplishments while serving as Deputy, & previously Boeing. He will be great!' " • In his resignation letter Thursday, Defense Secretary Mattis, 68, had said he would remain at DO for more than three months. On Thursday, Trump similarly announced that Mattis was retiring in February. • The news that Mattis will be leaving sooner than expected comes just days after Brett McGurk on Saturday ACCELERATED his planned departure and announced his resignation. • It took two days to get "ACCELERATED" into the McGurk story -- and the ProgDem media are still sitting silently on that aspect of the story. • • • THE MATTIS FALLOUT. I think history will not be kind to General Mattis, who was fired by both Obama and Trump -- the Obama firing, done without so much as a phone call to Mattis who was on the road and was told by his staff that a new CENTCOM leader had been named -- is another aspect of the Mattis resignation that is being ignored by mainstream media. For me, as has always been the case to date, President Trump will probably be proven right in his foreign policy decision to leave Syria. The world cries "Armageddon" with every move the President makes, but he follows through and wins. • As for Syria and ISIS, I wonder if Trump's game plan is to let ISIS overrun Syria and maul Russia and Iran and al-Assad, instead of the US helping its enemies in the Middle East win because we are doing their fighting for them. It's pretty clear that Iraq is now in the Iranian hegemony, as is Syria. Those decisions were made when President Obama pulled out of Iraq cold turkey at the end of 2011. President Trump was handed an on-the-ground fait accompli. • The question now is 'What will Russia do?' Will Russia fight Iran for supremacy in their part of the Middle East? I don't think so because that would end a lot like the Russia-Afghanistan war ended -- after many more Russian soldiers died. • It seems Trump and Pompeo and Bolton have decided to draw their line at the Israeli-Egyptian-Saudi borders, saying 'this far and no farther' to Iran and Russia, effectively deciding that Syria and Iraq are not worth fighting for. That sets up a potential fight with Russia and Iran if they move toward Israel or Saudi Arabia. But, Iran's proxy Hezbollah cannot defeat the combination of US-Israel-SA forces, and it probably couldn't defeat any one of them alone. • I don't believe that Iran would enter any such confrontation directly because it doesn't want to be invaded by aerial attacks while its own people revolt. And, it is sure and certain that Russia will not attack the United States in the Middle East. It is now going out of its way to allow freedom on aerial action to the US, with just an hour's notice before the US fighter jets move across Russian-held areas in Syria. • As for the Kurds, they have been able fighters in Iraq and Syria, but they have never made a difference to the outcome strategically. That role has always belonged to Turkey, whose real interests are in keeping the Iranian Shiite hegemony out of Syria and Iraq. Undeniably, with the United States out of Syria, Turkey's freedom to act is greatly enhanced, and that may be precisely why President Trump is withdrawing. Why not let Turkey -- which has real regional interests -- clean up Syria. It has been chafing at the bit to do it ever since the Syria civil war began. Letting the Sunni ISIS beat up Russia and Iran would fit very neatly into Turkey's goal of a Sunni-dominant Syria, and then Turkey would control ISIS, because Turkey is better equipped to control ISIS than the US will ever be -- if for no other reason than that Turkey not only understands, as does the US, how to deal with ISIS but is unconstrained in carrying out the "dealing." • • • THE PRESIDENT HAS A PLAN. President Trump is not as dumb as his US enemies like to pretend. And, Mike Pompeo and John Bolton are wise old hands in US foreign policy. All the current doomsday predictions are being made by those who have been telling every US President since George H. W. Bush that they do not understand the Middle East. Finally, along comes a US President who does understand the Middle East and BAM !! suddenly getting out is exactly the wrong thing to do. • American Thinker's Thomas Lifson pointed this reversal out on Saturday : "It's great fun watching critics of President Trump twist themselves into pretzels in order to denounce him. They evidently don't mind making fools of themselves by doing a 180-degree reversal of previous positions simply because Trump is now doing what they formerly supported, so it must be wrong. Two amusing examples follow. Joe Simonson of the Daily Caller News Foundation : 'As President Donald Trump announced his decision Wednesday to withdraw the nation's 2,000 troops from Syria, a bipartisan cadre of opinion-havers attacked him as recklessly abandoning allies in the region and jeopardizing America's influence over foreign affairs. One newspaper was particularly harsh : The Times. Quickly after Secretary of Defense James Mattis announced his resignation (in part as a protest against Trump's decision on Syria) Thursday, America's paper of record quickly produced a scathing editorial, proclaiming 'Jim Mattis Was Right.' 'Who will protect America now?' The Times asked. But the Times took an opposite position earlier : '[A]lmost a year ago, on Jan. 19, 2018, that same editorial board raked the President over the coals for even daring to continue America's policy of military adventurism. The Times expressed concern that more American troops beyond the 2,000 initially deployed could soon be sent overseas in a mission without any clear goals. 'Syria is a complex problem. But this plan seems poorly conceived, too dependent on military action and fueled by wishful thinking,' the Times said. While on Thursday, the Times worried that leaving Syria could leave the Kurds vulnerable to Turkey, at the beginning of 2018, the paper also believed that the U.S. would be setting up a clash between the minority group and a NATO ally. 'Turkey, which views the Kurds as an enemy, has threatened a cross-border assault. All of this raises the grim possibility that American troops will clash with Turkey, a NATO ally,' the Times wrote last January. Nowhere in Thursday's editorial does the Times ever point to an alternative timeline for withdrawal for American forces in Syria. Such an omission is quite startling, considering last January the paper's chief criticism of sending forces to the region was setting up just another forever-war in the Middle East." • AND, once more, the Defense Department has chosen to try to direct US foreign policy by anonymously leaking the information -- AFTER Mattis resigned -- that American troops may continue to operate against ISIS in Syria because the Pentagon is considering using Special Operation teams based in Iraq to target militants in Syria. The anonymous source forgot to mention that many of the 2,000 US troops in Syria are Special Operation forces. Can we hear the President tweeting, 'I will make that decision,' as he rightly should. • The Middle East Monitor said a month ago that Saudi Arabia and the UAE already have forces in Syria fighting ISIS while protecting the Kurds. Quoting the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the newspaper reported that a convoy of troops belonging to an Arab Gulf state recently arrived in the contact area between the Kurdish PKK/YPG and ISIS in the Deir Ez-Zor countryside. That troop deployment comes at a time when Turkey is preparing to launch an expanded military operation with the Free Syrian Army against the Kurdish PKK group in the northeast of Syria. THUS, the US Syrian withdrawal has brought to a halt a potentially explosive conflict between two allies already at each other's throats. This would count as an immediate Trump foreign policy achievement, except for the Swamp's hatred of President Trump, because neither Turkey nor the Saudis want a direct conflict between their forces, so they are likely to keep each other in check on the Kurds, and focus on the joint project of eradicating ISIS. Erdogan has long castigated his NATO ally, the US, over its support for Syrian Kurdish YPG fighters against Islamic State. Turkey considers the YPG a terrorist group and an offshoot of the armed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), fighting for Kurdish autonomy across the border on Turkish soil. In a speech in Istanbul, Erdogan said Turkey would mobilize to fight remaining ISIS forces in Syria and temporarily delay plans to attack Kurdish fighters in the northeast of Syria -- shifts both precipitated by the American decision to withdraw. • Israel will also escalate its fight against Iranian-aligned forces in Syria after the withdrawal of US troops, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday : "We will continue to act very aggressively against Iran's efforts to entrench in Syria," Netanyahu said in televised remarks, referring to an Israeli air campaign in Syria against Iranian deployments and arms transfers to Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas, carried out with Moscow often turning a blind eye. "We do not intend to reduce our efforts. We will intensify them, and I know that we do so with the full support and backing of the United States." Israel's biggest concern is that Iran may establish a land bridge through Iraq. But, Israel now has Saudi Arabia and the UAE -- armed with the latest US weapons, as is Israel -- as allies with a huge interest in preventing this. • • • DEAR READERS, the Swamp and its 'bipartisan foreign policy establishment' hate President Trump's withdrawal because they take the position that America must sacrifice its blood and resources wherever evildoers threaten the peace. It is called Pre-emptive Strikes and Nationbuilding. This is post-World War II foreign policy, created when only the US had the capability to militarily guarantee the freedom of US allies and innocent countries under threat. Communism is dead, except in China and North Korea. The US is no longer the sole economic giant capability of guaranteeing human rights. President Trump is in the process of moving US foreign policy out of the Cold War era and into an era in which global economic competition is the key. President Trump sees that paying for the peace and stability of every corner of the globe will inevitably make America a loser in this new world where economic competition counts above all. President Trump gets it. The Swamp never will. • And, a "well done" goes to triple-amputee veteran and Purple Heart recipient Brian Kolfage, who in just four short days has raised $13,600,000 -- as of Friday and growing -- on a Go Fund Me campaign to pay for the wall on the US border with Mexico. That is economic power being used to help President Trump when his erstwhile allies in the Swamp will not because they're stuck in the Cold War while the President is fighting today's real war in today's real world.