A War Trump Won

NYT ^ | 17 Dec 2017 | Ross Douthat

[mandaladon]

There is nothing more characteristic of the Trump era, with its fire hose of misinformation, scandal and hyperbole, than that America and its allies recently managed to win a war that just two years ago consumed headlines and dominated political debate and helped Donald Trump himself get elected president — and somehow nobody seemed to notice.

I mean the war against the Islamic State, whose expansion was the defining foreign policy calamity of Barack Obama’s second term, whose executions of Americans made the U.S.A. look impotent and whose utopian experiment drew volunteers drunk on world-historical ambitions and metaphysical dreams. Its defeat was begun under Obama, and the hardest fighting has been done by Iraqis — but this was an American war too, and we succeeded without massive infusions of ground troops, without accidentally getting into a war with Russia, and without inspiring a huge wave of terrorism in the West.

Why haven’t we noticed this success? One reason is the nature of our victory: As Max Abrahms and John Glaser wrote recently in the Los Angeles Times, the defeat of the Islamic State didn’t happen the way many foreign policy hawks envisioned, because it didn’t require also going to war with Bashar al-Assad or creating a new Syrian opposition army. At the same time, it happened more easily than intervention skeptics feared — so there isn’t a pundit chorus, right or left, ready to claim vindication in the victory.

Other reasons for the lack of attention are suggested by National Review’s David French, in a piece that helped inspire this one: a war-weary assumption that if you crush one terrorist group another just springs up (true to a point, but crushing an ambitious terrorist state is still a real achievement); a popular appetite for bad news

[mandaladon]

But this is also a press failure, a case where the media is not adequately reporting an important success because it does not fit into the narrative of Trumpian disaster in which our journalistic entities are all invested.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The left never gives Trump credit for anything positive...

[mandaladon]

But if you had told me in late 2016 that almost a year into the Trump era the caliphate would be all-but-beaten without something far worse happening in the Middle East, I would have been surprised and gratified. So very provisionally, credit belongs where it’s due — to our soldiers and diplomats, yes, but to our president as well.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~This from the NYT???

[Maceman]

[billorites]

But, Trump touched my cucu!

[Cicero]

Well, not surprising when you remember that Obama fought the war on the wrong side, backed by the lamestream media and all the foreign policy “experts.”

Trump fought the war on the right side, or simply stood by while the right guys won.

[gaijin]

Article author

Yes, I do drink soy, why do you ask..?

[farming pharmer]

Thanks for the excerpt. I won't give the center of the leftard homofascist universe NYT the pleasure of my mouse click.

That being said, great things can be accomplished when Americans no longer have a Muslim butt-buddy in the White House.

[lee martell]

That very first sentence is not well written, and is difficult to follow on first reading. It happens to every writer, when you want to say several things at one time.

[be-baw]

“Why haven’t we noticed this success?”

I’ve been noticing it all along. Then, again, I don’t have my head up my ass like asshat does...

[Spok]

Wasn’t it the NYT that declared the entire Obama regime to have been scandal free? What does the left consider to be Trump’s scandals? Seriously?

[atc23]

Tired of all the Winning yet? Me neither.

This and Gregg Jarrett’s piece regarding Mueller’s illegal acts regarding the transition docs. . .

Christmas is here a little early this year.

Granny Xlinton and the Obama’s have been rather quiet lately - I wonder what’s wrong?

[Tijeras_Slim]

LMAO

[kiryandil]

the Islamic State, whose expansion was the defining foreign policy calamity of Barack Obama’s second term, whose executions of Americans made the U.S.A. look impotent

That's why The Brown Clown was always wearing a suit.

"If he was gonna be impotent, he was gonna look impotent..."

[Pollster1]

That’s a bunch of Covfefe; no one believes it (or cares).

[Celerity]

That’s right, New York slimes... now eat your shorts.

[Celerity]

Maybe ISIS is the jv team.

Maybe their defeat wasn’t that hard. I don’t recall any real struggle here either.

MAYBE the real reason ISIS is defeated is because there is no more support for them coming from the White House !

Obama created ISIS. And they say that ISIS changed after the initial formation, but they didn’t change at all. They had the same charter ever since day 1.

Our ex president, traitor-in-chief supported them right up till january 2017.

We didn’t hear about their defeat, nor much at all about them because ISIS IS THE LEFT. The media, the dems, our ex-wastoid president.. all of them are supporters of ISIS.

[nickcarraway]

ISIS was always going to expand and that at a certain point retract and go away. That was the nature of its existence.

[Behind the Blue Wall]

If Obama in his first year had had unprecedented economic growth and a major military victory, the media would have already had the Mt. Rushmore plans underway.

[Flavious_Maximus]

A member and high priest of the degenerate Homosexual Times lecturing us about Trumps fire hose of misinformation and lies while they themselves print on a daily basis misinformation and out-right lies.

Whats good for the goose, etc.

[Fiddlstix]