2017 saw the destruction of the IS Caliphate.

ISIS has not gone away, but it is now only a guerilla force rather than a pseudo-state.

However, ISIS managed to suck the U.S. back into the middle east wars, and we have no intention of leaving.

In Iraq



United States. forces are not leaving Iraq in 2018, a newspaper quoted a senior source at the Iraqi joint security command as saying.

The London-based the New Arab quoted a senior general within the Iraqi Joint Operations Command saying “there is no room for discussing U.S. troops’ exit”.

This is not going over well with all Iraqis.



In a statement released on the sixth anniversary of the United States’ military withdrawal from Iraq in 2011, the Hezbollah Brigades called on Washington to withdraw its troops from the country voluntarily “before being forced” to do so.

Of course, the Hezbollah Brigade has made this threat before, and as yet have not carried it out.

In Afghanistan



Approximately 3,000 additional American troops have now deployed to Afghanistan under President Donald Trump‘s revised strategy for the war-torn country, the Pentagon said Thursday.

The Pentagon had previously put the number of US forces in Afghanistan at about 11,000 but Trump in August authorized an increase requested by the commander on the ground, General John Nicholson.

..Nicholson has said he needs nearly 16,000 troops overall in Afghanistan, and NATO nations have pledged to help make up the difference.

Eight years ago Obama had his own much larger Afghanistan Surge. It failed.

However, Trump has a new twist on the surge strategy - targeting the Taliban's drug factories.



The Pentagon announced recently that U.S.-led coalition forces had destroyed 25 insurgent-run drug labs as part of a new U.S. military strategy to weaken the Taliban by going after its sources of revenue. It said at least $80 million worth of narcotics had been destroyed.

...Although Attal said the raids in the south had destroyed more than $20 million worth of opium, local and foreign drug traffickers still “easily sold and bought drugs” in the north. Afghan opium production jumped by 87 percent from 2016 to a record 9,000 metric tons in 2017, according to the U.N. Office on Crime and Drugs.

If the idea was to cut opium production, then this strategy is a complete failure.



Then there is the biggest problem of all - Syria.

To get an idea of the situation, we need to consult a current map.



The northeast quarter of Syria is dominated by the SDF. We have 2,000 American troops in that part of the country.



US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Friday that he expected to see a larger US civilian presence in Syria, including contractors and diplomats, as the fight against Islamic State militants nears its end and the focus turns toward rebuilding and ensuring the militants do not return.

The United States has about 2,000 troops in Syria fighting Islamic State. Mattis' comments are likely to anger Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has previously called US troops "illegal invader" forces.

Assad is right. We are invaders.

My question is: Who are these contractors?

That's not the only place our troops are in Syria. Consider the green area on the border with Jordan.



Russia’s military Chief of Staff, General Valery Gerasimov, yesterday accused the United States of training former Daesh fighters at Syria’s southern military base of Al-Tanf.

Speaking in an interview with Russia’s Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, Gerasimov said that the US base, which is located in a strategic Syrian highway border crossing with Iraq, is “illegal”, adding that the area surrounding it has become “a black hole where militants operate unhindered”.

“The US forces have effectively turned their military base near the town of Al-Tanf in south-eastern Syria into a terrorists’ training camp,” he said.

“According to satellite and other surveillance data, terrorist squads are stationed there,” Gerasimov noted. “They are effectively training there.”

That's a bad sign. Yet the biggest problem is on the northern border, in the Aleppo province.



Around 30 sub-groups of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), under the guidance of Tukey, have unified to form the country’s 22,000 strong “National Army,” becoming Syria’s largest armed group that will fight against the Assad regime, Daesh and Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terrorists.

...In the wide-ranging Euphrates Shield Operation launched in August 2016, the Free Syrian Army -- with the support of the Turkish army -- had cleared 2,000 square kilometers (772 square miles) of land along the Turkish-Syrian border of terrorist elements. Over 15,000 soldiers in the newly-founded Syrian National Army are preparing to take part in the upcoming Afrin operation against PKK terrorists.

Assad says that Turkey is an illegal invader too.

We can't forget al-Qaeda controlled Idlib province in the northwest.

Donald Trump likes to put his name on things. Casinos, skyscrapers, laws. Having his name on a war is the next logical step.