Posted on by 53percenter

Trump’s Syria withdrawal causes prominent critics to do a 180 on troops in Syria


It’s great fun watching critics of President Trump twist themselves into pretzels in order to denounce him.  They evidently don’t mind making fools of themselves by doing a 180-degree reversal of previous positions simply because Trump is now doing what they formerly supported, so it must be wrong.


Two amusing examples follow.  Joe Simonson of the Daily Caller News Foundation:



As President Donald Trump announced his decision Wednesday to withdraw the nation’s 2,000 troops from Syria, a bipartisan cadre of opinion-havers attacked him as recklessly abandoning allies in the region and jeopardizing America’s influence over foreign affairs.


One newspaper was particularly harsh: The Times.


Quickly after Secretary of Defense James Mattis announced his resignation (in part as a protest against Trump’s decision on Syria) Thursday, America’s paper of record quickly produced a scathing editorial, proclaiming “Jim Mattis Was Right.”


“Who will protect America now?” The Times asked.


But the Times took an opposite position earlier:


[A]lmost a year ago, on Jan. 19, 2018, that same editorial board raked the president over the coals for even daring to continue America’s policy of military adventurism.


The Times expressed concern that more American troops beyond the 2,000 initially deployed could soon be sent overseas in a mission without any clear goals.


“Syria is a complex problem.  But this plan seems poorly conceived, too dependent on military action and fueled by wishful thinking,” The Times said.


While on Thursday The Times worried that leaving Syria could leave the Kurds vulnerable to Turkey, at the beginning of 2018, the paper also believed that the U.S. would be setting up a clash between the minority group and a NATO ally.


“Turkey, which views the Kurds as an enemy, has threatened a cross-border assault.  All of this raises the grim possibility that American troops will clash with Turkey, a NATO ally,” The Times wrote last January.


Nowhere in Thursday’s editorial does The Times ever point to an alternative timeline for withdrawal for American forces in Syria.  Such an omission is quite startling, considering last January the paper’s chief criticism of sending forces to the region was setting up just another forever-war in the Middle East.


Even more clownish is Max Boot.  Roger Kimball makes well deserved fun of the bitter NeverTrump, who, like his Washington Post colleague Jennifer Rubin, is willing to change his position on an issue once Trump agrees with it.




Photo credit: US Naval War College.


Predictably, the neo-con fraternity has its collective knickers in a twist over Mattis’s announced departure.  Max Boot, who is always good for a laugh these days, epitomized the angst in some recent tweets.  ’Jim Mattis is gone,’ he said in one.  ’God help America.  And the world.’  But then it has been obvious for some time that for Max the criterion of a good decision is that it was not taken by Donald Trump.


For example, when the President announced a couple of days back that he was withdrawing American troops from Syria – thus taking another step towards fulfilling his campaign promise to extricate America from needless foreign entanglements – Max skirled that the decisions was ‘a giant Christmas gift to our enemies.’  But one wag pointed out that it was not so long ago that Max said the opposite, insisting ‘Trump can’t do anything right – we don’t need troops in Syria.’  Okee-doke.  I am not sure if that is Walt-Whimanesque [sic] logic (‘Do I contradict myself?  Very well I contradict myself.  I am large.  I contain multitudes’) or something out of the more recondite precincts of Hegelian dialectic where, the sage of Berlin told us, ‘X = not-X.’  Whatever the explanation, Max’s pirouettes do put us on notice about what to expect from those NeverTrump quarters.


The only explanation for this sort of thing is derangement – TDS.


Update: A couple more (hat tip: Instapundit):





It’s great fun watching critics of President Trump twist themselves into pretzels in order to denounce him.  They evidently don’t mind making fools of themselves by doing a 180-degree reversal of previous positions simply because Trump is now doing what they formerly supported, so it must be wrong.


Two amusing examples follow.  Joe Simonson of the Daily Caller News Foundation:


As President Donald Trump announced his decision Wednesday to withdraw the nation’s 2,000 troops from Syria, a bipartisan cadre of opinion-havers attacked him as recklessly abandoning allies in the region and jeopardizing America’s influence over foreign affairs.


One newspaper was particularly harsh: The Times.


Quickly after Secretary of Defense James Mattis announced his resignation (in part as a protest against Trump’s decision on Syria) Thursday, America’s paper of record quickly produced a scathing editorial, proclaiming “Jim Mattis Was Right.”


“Who will protect America now?” The Times asked.


But the Times took an opposite position earlier:


[A]lmost a year ago, on Jan. 19, 2018, that same editorial board raked the president over the coals for even daring to continue America’s policy of military adventurism.


The Times expressed concern that more American troops beyond the 2,000 initially deployed could soon be sent overseas in a mission without any clear goals.


“Syria is a complex problem.  But this plan seems poorly conceived, too dependent on military action and fueled by wishful thinking,” The Times said.


While on Thursday The Times worried that leaving Syria could leave the Kurds vulnerable to Turkey, at the beginning of 2018, the paper also believed that the U.S. would be setting up a clash between the minority group and a NATO ally.


“Turkey, which views the Kurds as an enemy, has threatened a cross-border assault.  All of this raises the grim possibility that American troops will clash with Turkey, a NATO ally,” The Times wrote last January.


Nowhere in Thursday’s editorial does The Times ever point to an alternative timeline for withdrawal for American forces in Syria.  Such an omission is quite startling, considering last January the paper’s chief criticism of sending forces to the region was setting up just another forever-war in the Middle East.


Even more clownish is Max Boot.  Roger Kimball makes well deserved fun of the bitter NeverTrump, who, like his Washington Post colleague Jennifer Rubin, is willing to change his position on an issue once Trump agrees with it.




Photo credit: US Naval War College.


Predictably, the neo-con fraternity has its collective knickers in a twist over Mattis’s announced departure.  Max Boot, who is always good for a laugh these days, epitomized the angst in some recent tweets.  ’Jim Mattis is gone,’ he said in one.  ’God help America.  And the world.’  But then it has been obvious for some time that for Max the criterion of a good decision is that it was not taken by Donald Trump.


For example, when the President announced a couple of days back that he was withdrawing American troops from Syria – thus taking another step towards fulfilling his campaign promise to extricate America from needless foreign entanglements – Max skirled that the decisions was ‘a giant Christmas gift to our enemies.’  But one wag pointed out that it was not so long ago that Max said the opposite, insisting ‘Trump can’t do anything right – we don’t need troops in Syria.’  Okee-doke.  I am not sure if that is Walt-Whimanesque [sic] logic (‘Do I contradict myself?  Very well I contradict myself.  I am large.  I contain multitudes’) or something out of the more recondite precincts of Hegelian dialectic where, the sage of Berlin told us, ‘X = not-X.’  Whatever the explanation, Max’s pirouettes do put us on notice about what to expect from those NeverTrump quarters.


The only explanation for this sort of thing is derangement – TDS.


Update: A couple more (hat tip: Instapundit):







via American Thinker Blog

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