Unlike my colleagues, I’ve been a bemused spectator during this week’s Syria follies. As readers of these columns know (see, e.g., here, here, here, here, and here), I believe the United States has less interest in Syria than in the persistence of drought in Burkina Faso. That is why I was a steadfast naysayer on American intervention in a conflict among rivals whose common ground consists of hatred for America and affinity for sharia supremacism (and the abetting thereof — I’m looking at you, Vladimir).
The current frenzy was ignited by the president’s abrupt decision to pull U.S. forces (all 2,200 of them) out of Syria. This prompted Defense Secretary James Mattis’s resignation — though General Mattis’s stinging letter indicates that Syria was really just the last straw for him after two years in the Trump grinder.
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