Trump Scores, Breaks Generals’ 50-Year War Record

[Right_in_Virginia]

Trump Scores, Breaks Generals’ 50-Year War Record
American Conservative, Dec 28, 2018, Gareth Porter

The mainstream media has attacked President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria as impulsive, blindsiding his own national security team. But detailed, published accounts of the policy process over the course of the year tell a very different story. They show that senior national security officials and self-interested institutions have been playing a complicated political game for months aimed at keeping Trump from wavering on our indefinite presence on the ground in Syria.

The entire episode thus represents a new variant of a familiar pattern dating back to Vietnam in which national security advisors put pressure on reluctant presidents to go along with existing or proposed military deployments in a war zone. The difference here is that Trump, by publicly choosing a different policy, has blown up their transparent schemes and offered the country a new course, one that does not involve a permanent war state.

The relationship between Trump and his national security team has been tense since the beginning of his administration. By mid-summer 2017, Defense Secretary James Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Joseph Dunford had become so alarmed at Trump’s negative responses to their briefings justifying global U.S. military deployments that they decided to do a formal briefing in “the tank,” used by the Joint Chiefs for meetings at the Pentagon. 

But when Mattis and Dunford sang the praises of the “rules-based, international democratic order” that has “kept the peace for 70 years,” Trump simply shook his head in disbelief.
 
By the end of that year, however, Mattis, Dunford, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo believed they’d succeeded in getting Trump to use U.S. troops not only to defeat Islamic State but to “stabilize” the entire northeast sector of Syria and balance Russian and Iranian-sponsored forces. Yet they ignored warning signs of Trump’s continuing displeasure with their vision of a more or less permanent American military presence in Syria. 


Read more:  https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/trump-scores-breaks-generals-50-year-war-record-syria-mattis-dunford/

[Right_in_Virginia]

FTA

Mattis and Dunford were consciously exploiting Trump’s defensiveness about a timeline to press ahead with their own strategy unless and until Trump publicly called them on it. That is what finally happened some weeks after Trump’s six month deadline had passed. The claim by Trump advisors that they were taken by surprise was indeed disingenuous. What happened last week was that Trump followed up on the clear policy he had laid down in April.

There quite a bit of background information in the article.

[Oceander]

Yeah, it’s all one giant big conspiracy against Our Righteous Holy Savior Trump. 

[Right_in_Virginia]

Yeah, it’s all one giant big conspiracy against Our Righteous Holy Savior Trump.

How in the hell did you come up with this?  The very title refers to a 50-year military strategy.

[Oceander]

How in the hell did you come up with this?  The very title refers to a 50-year military strategy.

Generals agreeing together to exploit your sad-sack savior’s defensiveness is a classic accusation of conspiracy.

Put the orange koolaid down; it’s clearly not good for what remains of your mental stability. 

[Right_in_Virginia]

Generals agreeing together to exploit your sad-sack savior’s defensiveness is a classic accusation of conspiracy.

Put the orange koolaid down; it’s clearly not good for what remains of your mental stability.

Generals were agreeing to promote the only strategy they know.  This President is the only one said "no" to their perpetual war. 

[skeeter]

Generals were agreeing to promote the only strategy they know.  This President is the only one said "no" to their perpetual war.

The old adage if your only tool is a hammer every problem looks like a nail comes to mind. It's not about faulting the generals, it's a matter of the military's civilian oversight using its own judgment for a change.

[truth_seeker]

How long is required to "train" them to help themselves?

How long is required to win their "hearts and minds?"

In the case of the US military, the answer seems to always be "just a little while longer."

The US and world opinion prevents the required action; namely kill many more civilians.

[TomSea]

Oh, gee, the American Conservative, again.  I'm really surprised.

[DCPatriot]

Yeah, it’s all one giant big conspiracy against Our Righteous Holy Savior Trump.

Just knew you'd figure it out eventually.     

[jpsb]

Yeah, it’s all one giant big conspiracy against Our Righteous Holy Savior Trump.

Yes, because your warmongering neocon polices have work so well for us /s

Screw the entire middle east. To paraphrase a great man "the entire middle east is not worth the life of a single PFC".
Trump promised not to get us bogged down in Syria, he is keeping that promise.

[TomSea]

And Yemen? Don't hold up those arms sales to the Saudis.

Some say, this belies policies that seem to often help strongmen.

Erdogan, Mullahs in Iran, Assad, Putin....

And, I stopped reading the American Conservative as often when they had a slew of articles pretty negative on Trump at that.  They represent Buchanan, a co-founder and those kinds of ideals. Good to be non-interventionist but do it at the right time.

[truth_seeker]

Does anybody else, grasp what Pres. Eisenhower had in mind when he WARNED AGAINST  the "Military-Industrial Complex," in 1961?

I would add Military-Industrial-Intelligence-Congressional Complex.

Evidence indicates there hasn't been a major problem, our intelligence agencies didn't miss completely.

--Fall of USSR.

--September 11, 2001

to state the two most obvious.

[truth_seeker]

And Yemen? Don't hold up those arms sales to the Saudis.

Some say, this belies policies that seem to often help strongmen.

Erdogan, Mullahs in Iran, Assad, Putin....

And, I stopped reading the American Conservative as often when they had a slew of articles pretty negative on Trump at that.  They represent Buchanan, a co-founder and those kinds of ideals. Good to be non-interventionist but do it at the right time.

History AND common sense teaches there are situations which require strongmen.

--Stalin, WWII. Our strongest ally.

--Saddam, who kept balance in the ME, until we got a mistaken idea, which has kept wars going, since 2003.

The main purpose of "Strongmen" is a target for spending on the Military Industrial Intelligence Congressional Complex.

Funny thing, those strongmen: First we adopt them, sell them arms, keep them in power, next discard them, spend money on our OWN weapons and troops, to oust them.

--Cases in Point, Iran. Iraq. Taliban. etc.