Calming the Syria Hysteria

Have you noticed that some people think that the world is going to come to an end because President Trump has decided he doesn’t want American soldiers killed in the deserts of Syria anymore?

This would be odd, except for the fact that it fits neatly into the pattern of those suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome. TDS has been known to turn otherwise rational people into babbling lunatics.

I’m grateful that some folks haven’t succumbed to TDS on this issue, people like L. Scott Lingamfelter in his article A Potential Trump Doctrine in the Washington Times:

The primary U.S. role in this coalition, however, should be one of strategic sustainment characterized by stand-off power-projection — air and missile strikes, intelligence and special operations — in support of regional and indigenous ground forces to ensure victory. This way Mr. Trump can realize his desire to finalize the destruction of ISIS while avoiding the charge that we abandoned the fight in an Obama-like fashion. Being reliable in our pursuits in the Middle East is essential to sustaining our legitimate geo-political predominance in the region if we are to form other coalitions to counter Iranian hegemony, to say nothing of reviving peace negotiations between Arabs and Israelis.

If the president can skillfully accomplish disengagement in Syria while also completing our work to exterminate ISIS and alleviate the suffering they have wrought, he will have set in motion the establishment of a political-military architecture for a “Trump Doctrine of Justified Intervention” (TDJI). Such a doctrine would call for supporting insurgency conflicts with regional coalitions and stand-off capabilities where our national interests clearly reside, absent entangling America in debilitating and costly wars. Done correctly, he will have found the intersection between hawkish over-engagement and isolationist non-intervention in the employment of U.S. military power in insurgencies when such use and involvement is both jus ad bellum and jus in bello.

The same hysteria based on TDS has risen around the related resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis. Sanity has been brought to this issue on National Review Online by Victor David Hansen, who list multiple reasons for people to Get a Grip on the Hysteria:

First, we should remember that earlier General Mattis did not resign from the Obama administration; he was summarily and without much cause fired …

Two, defense secretaries, given the nature of the job, have historically sometimes had short tenures. Harry Truman and Barack Obama each had four different secretaries …

Three, earlier this year Mattis was the subject of a lot of curious stories quoting appraisals of him as “bulletproof,” given that despite his numerous disagreements with Trump (reportedly on getting out of the Paris climate accord, moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, quitting the Iran deal, transgender soldiers, etc. ), he still was seen as invaluable to the president …

Four, earlier this year Trump had promised to put troops into Syria to finish up destroying ISIS for “six months.” So his deadline was not really much of a surprise …

Fifth, on matters of entering or leaving the Middle East, U.S. strategists in the cases of Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq must develop a more coherent rationale to justify long-term occupations — to convince Americans that these increasingly numerous and optional interventions (whether six months or 18 years) enhance U.S. strategic advantages ...

BTW, while researching for this post, I ran across one of the original examples of TDS in this editorial from the Christian Post. It is fine for Christians to have different opinions of President Trump; for instance, I did not vote for him in 2016–though I plan to, Lord willing, in 2020. But the one thing that marks out Christians as not staying rooted in Scripture is when their hysteria matches that of the worldly culture around them. That is certainly the case with the Christian Post and many other Christians today.