In the early hours this morning, President Trump made an announcement on Twitter that shocked the U.S. national security establishment, made hawkish members of Congress queasy, and sent Pentagon officials scrambling to figure out exactly what happened. Less than two months after national security adviser John Bolton was pledging to keep U.S. troops in Syria for as long as Iranian personnel and pro-Iranian militias were operating on Syrian soil, Trump said American ground forces would be pulling out in short order.



We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 19, 2018



Hours after Trump’s declaration-by-tweet, the Associated Press reported that planning for the U.S. withdrawal is already under way. The president’s Republican allies on Capitol Hill are none too pleased with the about-face, calling it a tragic mistake of epic proportions and a move that would do nothing but grease the skids for a complete Iranian and Russian takeover of the country. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who has struck up a personal relationship with Trump after a rocky start, referred to the president’s decision as similar to former President Barack Obama’s 2011 withdrawal from Iraq — one that hawkish Republicans claim allowed the Islamic State to subsume territory on both sides of the Iraqi-Syrian border.

While there is always a slight chance that Trump could switch gears at the last minute and change his mind, one hopes that he won’t. Leaving Syria now is the right call, even if those in “the blob” view it as a disaster.

Too few people seem to remember why the United States is in Syria in the first place. The U.S. mission has nothing to do with checking Iran’s ambitions, protecting the Syrian Kurds in perpetuity, separating Turkish and Kurdish forces from killing each other, or forcing Syrian President Bashar Assad to cooperative on a post-war political settlement he has no intention of yielding. At its core, the U.S. objective was to kill the Islamic State, shrink the group’s territorial control, and rain hell on its heads until local forces in Syria and Iraq could take matters into their own hands and finish the job.

American military involvement in Syria was strictly about counterterrorism; transforming Syria into some democratic oasis free of Iranian and Russian influence was never in the cards. Those complaining that Tehran and Moscow had more influence and power in Syria than the United States neglected to mention that Syria’s political future was far more important for Iran and Russia than the United States. In the view of the Iranians and Russians, Assad’s survival was indispensable; to Washington, however, Assad’s survival was an unfortunate but nonetheless obscure development in a country that was never all that important to the U.S. to begin with.

We can expect a lot of hand-wringing and obtuse arguments about Trump throwing American credibility in the garbage. The typical cast of characters on the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post will attempt to scare the president into reversing the withdrawal. You can be sure that images of a mighty Iran dominating the Middle East will be invoked on Fox News, a disingenuous effort to convince the president that all hell would break lose if the few thousand American troops aren’t there to ward off the forces of evil.

Don’t pay attention to a word of it. Because when evidence is lacking, people resort to fear.

Love him or hate him, Trump is making the wise decision. As depressing as it is to admit, Syria will be a shattered, bankrupt, violent place with or without U.S. troops sitting in their barracks in the Syrian desert.

Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.