Obama never wanted military intervention in Syria or Libya. Unrelenting neocons at the State Department (Sec. Clinton et al) and the CIA foisted it on him and then ground him into submission. He called Libya the worst mistake of his presidency.
It took the impervious self-certainty of an egomaniacal sociopath—enter Donald Trump— to resist and then ultimately defy deep state neocons and order the CIA to stop arming the Islamic jihadists fighting to overthrow the Assad government in Syria. The opposition to this decision is hard to overstate. Trump was under intense establishment pressure not only to continue the program, but to expand it. His Russia problem didn’t help.
The implications of his decision are beyond significant. It virtually assures the collapse of the rebel forces and hastens an end to the civil war. What’s more, it drastically reduces the likelihood of a US military confrontation with Russia in Syria. This decision may turn out to be the most consequential of Trump’s presidency—and the best foreign policy decision for America (and the Syria) in a very long time.
If the CIA didn’t import, train, arm, fund, and provide diplomatic cover and media coverage for Islamic extremists to overthrow the Assad government, there wouldn’t have been a civil war in Syria or a refugee crisis in Europe. Trump’s decision will save thousands of Syrian lives and prevent untold human suffering—it could also prevent nuclear war.
More than 2 million Syrian Christians applaud Trump’s decision because they know that for the last half century they have lived and worshipped safely and freely under Assad and his father. They also know what fate awaits them when Assad falls and the new Saudi-endorsed Wahhabi regime imposes Sharia Law—and Islamic morality police descend on cosmopolitan Damascus.
A secular Syria run by the former London ophthalmologist and his JP Morgan investment banker wife is infinitely better for America’s strategic interests than any Islamic regime of jihadist crazies the CIA has been arming. Assad is the moderate in Syria, the only one.
Trump should now join with Russia to help the (real) Syrian Army drive out ISIS and regain control over its territory and borders. Then repatriate refugees from Europe with resettlement subsidies from the Syrian government, with assistance from Russia, the European Union and the United States. Only then can the principal nations collaborate with the Assad government on meaningful reforms in Syria.
Just one minor detail remains open. It’s thorny. The trouble with jihad is once you start one, it’s almost impossible to stop. So the question that now looms large is what will the thousands of angry young Muslim men, with jihad in their hearts and billions of dollars in US arms in their hands, do when the fighting ends in Syria? Maybe they’ll return the weapons to their CIA handlers and go back to their goats. Don’t bet your life on it. Trump’s generals best start planning defensive strategies for the kind of blowback that ensued last time the geniuses at the CIA-armed Islamic jihadists.