I have been posting this argument from the beginning. Paul Pillar is an outstanding pundit. Trump is correct in Syria full stop and I generally do not have many good things to say about Trump. The peaceful solution for Syria is what is happening now so long as Turkey does not enter cities like Manbij, Kobane, and begin to reduce its footprints in Afrin. Resettling Syrian refugees back to Syria is necessary now since Turkey have had to cope with two million refugees for 8 years while the West try to create a Kurdish statelet to protect themselves against ISIS. ISIS itself was a phantom menace created by the West from their excessive fear of Iran, propagated by Israel. ISIS will not reemerge as a result of US withdrawal. The conditions that led to ISIS do not exist today. The defeat of Sunni sectarians in Iraq and the defanging of Saudi Arabia made a return of ISIS highly unlikely. It is important to understand that the rise of ISIS occur as a result of tremendous financial backing of wealthy gulf states.

US presence in Syria was illegal as was the USAF sorties over Syrian airspace. Accordingly, the withdrawal currently underway is the only alternative for the US if it is concerned at all about international law, which we know it isn’t.
Nonetheless, Americans have become the “actually fighting Israeli army”. And, US military has proven most ineffective in the pursuit of Israeli or American objectives.
A military that can only bomb from afar will always be both expensive and of dubious usefulness.
Yankee Go Home and Stay There...!

That ignores a vital part of the mission in Syria, which is to serve Israeli interests. It was to block Iran from places Israel wanted to block them, and a jumping off point to monitor then attack Iran.

It sidesteps another vital part, which was to destroy the Syrian state as a functioning entity, in service of the Israeli project to be a villa in a wasteland, safe the way Roman made peace in Carthage.

I totally agree. Our presence in Syria had to be short term. 1. We are in Syrian sovereign territory, and soon enough Assad will be able to expand back to his full reach. 2. Turkey has done this 2x before. 2016 and 2017. In the N.W. Kurds were killed or sent back to the N.E. Where was the outcry then? 3. We are between several rocks and hard places. Turkey, who don't want Syrian autonomy on another border (Iraq); Iraq, who don't want anti Assad folks between them and fellow travelers (Allawites and Iran); Assad who wants his country back; Russia who will appease any anti American wishes; Iran who don't want Satan so close to it's proxies.
A better POTUS would have handled this more diplomatically and stealthily.

Twice now the Zion*st thought police have deleted my comment by marking it as spam. If my repost under the name Jeffrey Fein does not appear, you can find it at http://whimsicaldog.blogspo...

Checking in, I see that indeed, my repost has been removed.

Dr. Pillar, you are quite literally the first professional commentator I have seen to voice these incredibly obvious and rather significant questions. I find that rather telling as concerns the thinking - or lack thereof - in the larger foreign policy community on this issue.

Excellently stated. I'll be following your future work.

Actually 1,000+-. We pulled back some who were too close to the border. If Turkey stops at 18 miles as promised, we will still be south of them. Whether we stay or not remains to be seen. I know we are rounding up as many bad IS guys as we can find and routing them to Iraq, but they are spread out in dozens of prisons.

Actually it was 50 in the North that moved out of the way. The rest are along the river to the east. That is not where the Turkish action is ongoing. The other 1,000 didn't move. Even though they should. Time to move out.

They are on their way to Iraq. To fight IS. Then IS will move back to Syria and we will ask the Kurds: "Could you please let us back?"

I suspect Assad and the Russians can do a decent job of killing terrorist. We don't need to be going back to Syria. We probably need to have a, "Come to Allah" talk with Iraq about our troops there. We don't need to be in every country around the world. We cannot make the world into the U.S. But we sure as heck have been spending trillions trying. We have failed everywhere we've tried it. The answer is simple. Bloody well stop trying.

It's time for new partnerships around the world. Where we are a back up to war, not someone who will drive the war to widen. Having true partners is a PITA when they don't just go along with what we want. It's a give and take. But that is the real way of the world. The more we deny that and literally start/widen wars we are making it worse, not better.

We got into fighting IS in Syria because Assad wouldn't. He preferred to have them slaughter his rebels. Russia can't/ won't do it without Assad. Iran might but it's getting expensive for Hezbollah to lose people. As for Iraq our goal there is to keep Iran at bay. The country is full of pro Iranian militias that the government has little control over, but they are the biggest threat to Sunni IS.

How is Kurdish desire the national interest of US? Even if Kurds get a country, a landlocked country between Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria. All countries surrounding it don't get along with Kurds, not Kurds' fault but that is the geopolitical reality. If they get a state, in a constant blockade and pressure from neighbors (example: aftermath of Iraqi kurdish independence referndum), it will remain an investment black hole, where US tax payer will pour and pour and pour, with no tangible result.

I don't like the idea of leaving the abandoning the Kurds but as you said we don't need top be there.

The kurds are communist terrorists. They don't care about America they are just happy to get guns and money. USA is certainly not abandoning them. USA helped them fight ISIS gave them finances and military equipment. Now ISIS is gone, is USA suppose to support them against their own NATO allies? That makes no sense. It is not USA responsibly.

We are both in agreement we don't need to be there but we are in a disagreement over the other parts of you comment.

So we have aided and abetted not only terrorists but communists? With $? A fit of the vapors over comes me. No wonder Trump pulled us out! But if we are not abandoning them by not supporting them, then perhaps we are guilty of "throwing under the busism?"

Terrorist is just a perjorative. It has lost meaning and just means your enemy now. Turkey and Saudi are terrorist states.... Just our allies...

One country's terrorist is another country's freedom fighter. Guess what the Nazis called freedom fighters?

deep strategy of Trump is so unpredictable that Pentagon itself not knows the final goals to make America Great Again.

Trump said it pretty clearly during the campaign. Then he fired his friends and hired his enemies and got off track.

Trump is a living meme nowadays.