Thanks for this article Liberty. I’ve been arguing over the past two days these same points so eloquently pointed out here. It’s a moot point now though because it looks as if forces from the UAE and Saudi Arabia are moving into those positions. I think they can just as well accomplish our goals here. I’m guessing they’ll have a lot of artillery assets as we did in the region. They’ll be backed up by air power out of Jordan, Kuwait/Iraq (US) and most likely a lot of good intelligence assets out of Israel (which will never be reported). They will be able to accomplish our mission and I think the last of the ISIS stronghold will be wiped out by Kurdish forces with Turkey and Iran forced to withdraw from Syria. Unlike Obama we will have not spiked the ball on the five yard line. Trump is more fortunate because he was about to make the same mistake.
One myth I would like to dispense is everyone saying we want to bring our troops home. These guys are most likely not going to be home anytime soon. They are on deployment. My guess is they re-deploy to Camp Arafjan in Kuwait as we have strict troop limits now that we can station in Iraq. They will go home at the end of their deployment. We are just re-positioning them.
The U.S. has plenty of assets and ability to respond to anything in the Mideast including Syria if need be except Benghazi,Libya when government watched men die.