POTUS
POTUS loves himself a man in uniform
Trump has already shown that more than sensible military pullbacks, he values Mattis' hot breath against the back of his neck

Speaking to his base yesterday Trump claimed the US would be "coming out of Syria very soon" and it was time to let "the other people take care of it now."

While that arguably sounds like a very good thing (unless you are a Kurd, in which case it's yet another US stab in the back), we can recall Trump said the same things, only much more clearly and more often about Afghanistan only to end up authorizing another Pentagon surge in that country.


In fact in Syria itself [Trump] has cruise missile bombed the Syrian government - a line that even Obama did not cross. Even more importantly he has handed over the running the war so that now whether US strikes against Syrian army in its own country and how often is completely in the hands of the military and often at a very low rank level, sometimes by the trigger men themselves. (The shooting down the Syrian Su-22 over central Syria last year was supposedly simply taken by the US pilot who fired the missile.)


Trump says he will order US military out of Syria but everything he has done so far; his record Pentagon budgets, his U-turn on Afghanistan, his general worship, his giving free reign to the military to do in Syria whatever they decide suggests the opposite - that he is a toadie of the military, afraid to displease it and endlessly appeasing it.

Trump is lying to himself and his base. The US will get out of Syria when the Pentagon wants that and not a minute earlier. And there will be no one to blame for that but him.