"Donald Trump's initial instinct in 2015...."

Perhaps he should bring back Steve Bannon for some balance.

Bannon is busy helping to re-nationalize Europe:
https://www.politico.eu/art...

You mean all those politicians leading Europe have no leadership ability, or do you mean all those Europeans are rubes who just don't get the truth about what a great job Merkel and Macron and what's his name in Brussels have really been doing all these years.

No one dare mention the fact that the United States is violating international law by carrying out military operations on Syrian territory. Nope.

International Law vs the so-called “liberal international rules-based order". Liberal, international?

Graham Allison: Basically, if you look at the piece I wrote for Foreign Affairs last year—about which there was great controversy—it argues that the concept of the liberal international rules-based order is mostly mythology. Contrary to the conventional claims about this “liberal international rules-based order,” as I explain in that article: (1) The primary cause of the “long peace” of the past seven decades has not been some liberal international order, but rather, for the first four decades of that period, the stalemate between two deadly adversaries in the Cold War; (2) the primary driver of U.S. involvement in the world over these decades was not to build some liberal international order but to defeat what it saw as an existential threat to itself posed by an expansionist, revolutionary, Communist Soviet Union; (3) and although Trump is undermining key elements of the current order, he is far from the biggest threat to global stability. The main changes that have happened in the arrangements and procedures of the past seven decades are: the decline in U.S. share of global power as China has risen meteorically; the return of Russia as a player that is still a nuclear superpower, or certainly second to none with respect to destructive power, with a military that’s willing and ready to fight for the Kremlin’s objectives; and the discrediting of the American foreign policy establishment in the 21st century, from the 2003 invasion of Iraq to attempts to create a democracy in Afghanistan. All those, in my view, are much greater factors in the changing world order than Donald Trump—though most people want to avoid these painful truths and just blame Trump.

https://www.russiamatters.o...

The Myth of the Liberal Order. From Historical Accident to Conventional Wisdom
By Graham Allison

These misconceptions about the liberal order’s causes and consequences lead its advocates to call for the United States to strengthen the order by clinging to pillars from the past and rolling back authoritarianism around the globe. Yet rather than seek to return to an imagined past in which the United States molded the world in its image, Washington should limit its efforts to ensuring sufficient order abroad to allow it to concentrate on reconstructing a viable liberal democracy at home.

https://www.foreignaffairs....

I have great fears where John Bolton is going to take us. He is carrying out policies that he said he would . Is war with Iran next?

At least there are outlets, like here, where there is some push back to false, widely accepted narratives. The trouble is the increasing censorship to counter much of the push back, but the silver lining is they are despairing.

The fact the US only had 2,000 or so forces committed when neocons like Bill Kristol we're calling for 50,000 to be deployed to Syria shows they couldn't get the public to back another military adventure, despite their claims that it was necessary. Obama and Trump did the right thing not committing to Syria like Bush had to Afghanistan and Iraq. And Obama at least avoided fully committing the same mistake he made in Libya with Syria.

I agree with damned near every word you said, Larry. Our policies and actions in Syria have been horrid from the beginning. The only bright spot was the assistance we provided to the Kurds against the IS jihadis. What good we did there, although still illegal under international law, is being wiped out by our insistence on staying there and obstruction of Kurdish reconciliation with Damascus.

....

"I've done it, it is fine. ... They all campaigned on it, but they never did. I also campaigned on it."

https://twitter.com/realDon...

moved the US embassy, by the way very inexpensively.

End of the world in sight. You and I are on the same page. Bless you brother.