Better reason than we had for beating al Qaida? Reason enough to send tens of thousands of troops again?
We shouldn’t send any troops until we realign ourselves with only using troops with RoE that are favorable to them, when necessary, and with a clear charge and ability to outright win.
Trump has said repeatedly that he wants to go back to Reagan’s approach of so strengthening our military that he doesn’t expect to ever need to use it.
Jeb! and Rubio are much more Graham-like in wanting to send in troops. Reagan is the one master we’ve had on this issue in decades and decades and decades.
Al Qaeda was not in Iraq *before* we invaded, so that is not a legitimate question. Saddam was keeping the extremists in check in Iraq, so that he could stay in power. There is a big difference in saying we should attack violent terrorists who want to destroy us like Al Qaeda and ISIS and saying we want to overthrow governments to try to spread democracy and to nation build, even when it’s not demonstrably in our national interest.