Even When Trump Inadvertently Does Something Right...

Jeremy Scahill is one of the best investigative journalists in the country. You might know his work, particularly on matters related to foreign policy, from The Nation or from The Intercept or from his books, The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government's Secret Drone Warfare Program or Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield. Yesterday an early morning tweet storm may help people to understand their own mixed feelings about Trump's moves this week in regard to Syria and Afghanistan. Progressives want to end American involvement in those two tragic wars. But... Trump. Scahill:

1. I support withdrawing US troops from all these wars, overt and covert.
2. Trump is an unstable authoritarian who cannot be trusted.
3. “Mattis was an adult” is bullshit. He’s a hawkish war criminal.
4. It’s very telling that the war party in DC is furious.
5. This is an opportunity for progressive forces to assert an alternative vision for US foreign policy.
6. Trump is a crooked charlatan. But these withdrawals would represent a dent in the armor of the bipartisan war machine.
7. This chaos presents opportunity.

First off, who isn't critical of Trump's wag the dog motives in Syria? It's perfectly legitimate for anti-war progressives to criticize him and what's left of his tattered and corrupt regime for a lack of coherent strategy in regard to what apsses for a foreign policy. That's different from the pro-Military Industrial argument news outlets-- just watch MSNBC-- are making. Glorifying Mattis just because he called out Trump is as much a mistake as is glorifying U.S. policy of engaging in endless wars.

Remember, Bernie would also be withdrawing U.S. troops from the Middle East (albeit within a more coherent and clear policy agenda).

As soon as Trump made his announcement this week, Win Without War director Stephen Miles issued a statement that helps speak to how progressives looks at Trump's troop withdrawals.

Since the beginning of the conflict in Syria, the United States has gotten its response wrong every step of the way, and Donald Trump’s latest moves are no exception.

From day one, Win Without War has opposed a U.S. military response to a crisis with no military solution, and we continue to support the full withdrawal of American military personnel from Syria. However, Donald Trump’s plan to declare ‘victory’ and walk away from an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe-- one that the U.S. in part helped create-- is reckless, shortsighted, and wrong. Even worse, given that just yesterday a federal court judge chastised Donald Trump’s first National Security Advisor for ‘selling out our country’ to Turkey, we are left wondering what secret deals and backroom arrangements with Turkey and other major players in Syria may actually be driving this Administration’s new plans in Syria.

...When Congress reconvenes in January, it must conduct the basic oversight of Donald Trump’s foreign policy that under Republican House and Senate majorities has thus far failed to provide. Congress must connect the dots between Trump’s web of foreign ties and questionable deals with a growing axis of authoritarian dictators. Any oversight initiative must also shine a light on the continued violence, instability, and human suffering caused by our military misadventures in nearly every corner of the globe.

The people of Syria have suffered immensely for our nation’s repeated fueling of war and limited efforts at peace. Now, as we bring our service-members home from the battlefield, we must not continue to repeat those very same mistakes.

Remember, the Republicans turning on Trump over Syria, Afghanistan and Mattis-- like Lindsey Graham, Kinzinger and Marco Rubio-- are not our friends and are not advocates of good policy. When someone who votes for all TRump's right-wing crap, like Ben Sasse (R-NE), says "This is a sad day for America," he means a sad day for the Military Industrial Complex he represents.

Yesterday, Eli Lake, in a column for Bloomberg News, wrote that "Trump may not know it yet, but his presidency is collapsing. [His] supporters may still feel unfazed, even confident. Trump has burned through two chiefs of staff, two national security advisers, a secretary of state and an attorney general in less than two years. He has survived. This resignation, though, is different... Mattis provided Trump with a powerful shield. Whatever you thought of his views, Mattis embodied military virtue and the spirit of public service. As long as he served the president, reluctant Republicans could point to the Pentagon and say: If Mattis supports Trump, then so do I. They can no longer do that." Well... we'll see if they do or they don't-- and for how long. My expectation from Republicans is... low.

Philip Rucker and Bob Costa reported in that Washington Post yesterday that Trump's decisions and conduct have led to a fracturing of his coalition. "Hawks condemned his sudden decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria. Conservatives called him a 'gutless president' and questioned whether he would ever build a wall. Political friends began privately questioning whether Trump needed to be reined in... Said one former Trump administration official: 'There’s going to be an intervention. Jim Mattis just sent a shot across the bow. He’s the most credible member of the administration by five grades of magnitude. He’s the steady, safe set of hands. And this letter is brutal. He quit because of the madness.'"

I hope you saw Marcy Wheeler's post yesterday, We Will Not Get Peace From The People Who Dismember Dissidents Alive. She warned that while she appreciates that Scahill really does capture this ambivalence [in that tweet storm], "far too many others welcoming a potential troop withdrawal are not recognizing the complexity of the moment. While we don’t yet fully understand the complex dynamics that led to it, Trump decided to withdraw from Syria during a phone call with a man who has spent two months embarrassing Trump, Trump’s son-in-law, and the corrupt Saudi prince whose crackdown Trump has enthusiastically backed by releasing details of how that prince lulled an American resident dissident to a third country so he could be chopped up with a bone saw while still breathing. And even while Erdogan was embarrassing Trump with those details about Khashoggi’s assassination, he was pressuring Trump to extend the same favor to him by extraditing Fethullah Gulen so he could be chopped up in some grisly fashion."

She asks how Trump's fondness for fossil fuels and arms sales can be countered and insists that "no withdrawal is going to lead to 'peace' or even a retreat of the US empire so long as Trump exacerbates an already unforgivable US addiction to fossil fuels and reliance on arms sales. Particularly with Saudi Arabia but also with Turkey, Trump has excused his fondness for authoritarianism by pointing to arms sales. And on these issues, Trump actually agrees with the “war party in DC,” which will make it far harder to counter them. Yes, many of the new Democrats entering Congress-- most of all Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-- don’t have these horrible habits. So what can you do to make sure her Green New Deal not only isn’t squelched by party leadership, but is seen as the alternative to Trump by centrists?"