America has no more than a thousand troops in Syria along with allied troops who support local friends. Are we willing to fight and die in Syria? After our Afghanistan skedaddle debacle it is more urgent to answer that question.
Russian President Vladimir Putin criticized the presence of foreign troops in Syria, saying they are there against the will of the Syrian government and are blocking the consolidation of the war-torn country, the Kremlin said Tuesday.
The American and coalition forces in eastern Syria are who Putin is talking about.
These forces are supporting anti-Assad
Arabs and Kurds while keeping an eye on ISIL and the Iranians. And they screen Iraq from threats from Syria as a bonus.
I do wish we'd decide what we're willing to fight and die for there :
The Obama administration ignored the logical consequences of saying Assad had to step down by waging a parallel war as a de facto ally of Assad against the common enemy of ISIL that put off enforcing that declaration. The defeat of the ISIL caliphate has exposed the wide gap between the stated preference for Assad to leave and the focus of military action on ISIL only. So what do we do now?
Trump scaled back our presence to avoid conflict with Turkey. So he only partially answered my question. I posed the question of whether we try to win and defeat Assad and his regional allies or would we simply wait around until our enemies figure out how to defeat us.
We declined to try to defeat Assad. But we remain there. Are we waiting for a sharp blow against our forces to justify withdrawal?
We should decide why we are in Syria and what we are willing to fight for before Putin decides that Biden's record-setting flight from Afghanistan should have a round two in eastern Syria.
American firepower hammered a small battalion of Russian mercenaries in eastern Syria in early 2018. Putin may want revenge despite being quiet about the heavy losses at the time.
Seriously, that would be the prime place for our enemies--Assad, Russia, and Iran--to put pressure on America in the aftermath of the Afghanistan skedaddle debacle.
