Is Trump Right to Pull out of Syria?

President Trump's announcement that he will be pulling our troops out of Syria has led to a firestorm of disagreements on all sides of the political spectrum. Among both conservatives and liberals, among Democrats and Republicans, reaction is mixed. As a conservative, my own reaction is mixed.

First of all, I support killing terrorists, whether they be ISIS, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Al Shabaab, or other groups.  I support Israel killing terrorists from Hamas or Hizbollah for that matter. I supported our going into Afghanistan after 9-11 because the Taliban government refused to turn over Usama bin Laden and his killers. Thus, we had every right to go in and get them. I think history has yet to make its final judgment on our invasion of Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction (such as they were). We created a mess in Libya, a country we should have taken out after the downing of Pan Am 103 over Scotland.

The question now before us is Syria. General James Mattis has announced his resignation over the decision. While I respect General Mattis greatly, I am still torn.

Have we defeated ISIS? That's debatable. While they are now limited to certain pockets in the Middle East, their terrorist potential in the West still exists. Some conservatives like Michael Medved have pointed out that the abandonment of the Kurds is a tragic and shameful mistake, especially given the facts that they have been instrumental in driving ISIS from power and that the Erdogan government in Turkey wants to destroy them as enemies of the Turkish state.

There is also the issue of Iran and Russia, both of whom have interests in Syria and would love to fill whatever void we leave. Granted, the geopolitics here are great and beyond the expertise of this humble observer.

Yet, what I cannot get out of my system is the firm belief that we are trying to achieve something unachievable in places like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and other places. If our leaders really think we can create Jeffersonian democracies out of these places, they are living in a fantasy world-and I don't think President Trump is. Yes, we created decent, functional democracies out of Japan and Germany after World War 2, but there is a difference between the former group and latter two: Simply put, the biggest difference is Islam.

Our enemy, whether Western leaders want to face it or not, is not an army or a government or even a terrorist organization. Our enemy is an idea. That idea is a 1400 year-old belief that Islam must rule over other religions. That is why we are being attacked. That is why innocent people are being slaughtered. If 20 years from now, ISIS has been wiped out, we will be guarding ourselves against other Islamist organizations that have taken its place.

Does this mean that we must perpetually have our troops in the Middle East or other backward Muslim lands? I would hope not. For one thing, all that does is increase the hatred that many ordinary Muslims feel towards us as "occupying infidels".  Even when I was an American GI stationed in (West) Germany during the 1960s, we were not exactly the most popular people in town due to the perception that we were all hard-drinking, brawling Fraulein chasers. That was nothing compared to our troops having to serve (and fight) in Muslim countries.

 The presence of American infidel  troops in Saudi Arabia led to the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers. That is another highly problematical country. Because of Saudi oil, and more recently, the fact that we have common concerns over Iran and other Islamist forces that might topple the Kingdom, we have allowed ourselves to have too close a relationship with a despicable and corrupt regime, where human rights are a joke. Not only does the country have draconian laws, largely based around Wahhabist Islam, the Kingdom also uses its petro-dollars to fund radical mosques and schools in the West including radical Middle East Studies departments in US universities. This is a country that enforces the death penalty for Muslims who leave the religion. And of course, 15 of the 19  hijackers of 9-11 came from Saudi Arabia. The time seems long overdue that we  stop depending on oil from Saudi Arabia (and other unstable countries) when we have all we need right beneath our feet.

In today's "global world", it seems naive to think we can close ourselves off from a part of the world whose people represent such a physical threat to us and our liberties. But that is the whole idea behind secure borders, which I think are still possible for any nation that has the will to enforce them. It is inexplicable that the West seems unable or unwilling to keep dangerous people out of their countries. We once kept communists from entering the US because we deemed their ideas dangerous to democracy and freedom. Should we not do the same when it comes to the ideology of Islam?

Coming back to Syria, if we can find a way to protect our Kurdish allies, I really don't care what happens to that God-forsaken place. In fact, the only country in the region I care about is Israel. My gut instincts tell me we need to separate ourselves from the Islamic world as diplomatically and peacefully as possible. The Henry Kissingers and James Mattis's of the world no doubt can point out all the flaws of my thinking, but sometimes a sound world view is better than geo-political thinking.