NBC News is reporting – based on anonymous sources – that President Trump decided on the pullout of forces from Syria during a telephone call with Turkish leader Recep Erdogan. They are clearly appalled that a deal maker would make a deal, especially when the positions of his support staff were ignored.

President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw American troops from Syria was made hastily, without consulting his national security team or allies, and over strong objections from virtually everyone involved in the fight against the Islamic State, according to U.S. and Turkish officials.

Trump stunned his Cabinet, lawmakers and much of the world with the move by rejecting the advice of his top aides and agreeing to a withdrawal in a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last week, two officials briefed on the matter said.

The Dec. 14 call, described by officials who were not authorized to discuss the decision-making process publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, is a view into a Trump decision with profound consequences, including the resignation of widely respected Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.

File photo of Trump on the phone on Air Force One

Photo credit: Official White House hoto by John Boghosian 

The anti-Trump narrative remains intact with this overview. He is impetuous, stubborn, and ignorant. Evidently, it is appalling that he would ignore the advice of the foreign policy establishment because they know far more than he does, and deserve to be obeyed (because their track record is so outstanding?).

The details of the story as recounted by the unauthorized sources claiming knowledge of the affair, however, can be viewed very differently if one makes different assumptions, staring with the view that Trump campaigned on a promise to withdraw troops from Syria, is suspicious of never-ending commitments of troops to troubled foreign lands, and no longer is willing to sacrifice American blood and treasure defending allies who refuse to assume the burden of their own defense. The foreign policy establishment has invested years – entire careers of most key officials – in managing relationships that are premised on the United States “leading” (as in paying for and sacrificing our youths for) our allies, who greatly benefit from the US taking the major burden. Those allies are upset with Trump’s demands and no doubt frequently tell their longtime correspondents in the US FP establishment how reckless Trump is, and how disruptive he is.

Consider this, from NBC:

Erdogan, though, quickly put Trump on the defensive, reminding him that he had repeatedly said the only reason for U.S. troops to be in Syria was to defeat the Islamic State and that the group had been 99 percent defeated. "Why are you still there?" the second official said Erdogan asked Trump, telling him that the Turks could deal with the remaining IS militants.

With Erdogan on the line, Trump asked national security adviser John Bolton, who was listening in, why American troops remained in Syria if what the Turkish president was saying was true, according to the officials. Erdogan's point, Bolton was forced to admit, had been backed up by Mattis, Pompeo, U.S. special envoy for Syria Jim Jeffrey and special envoy for the anti-ISIS coalition Brett McGurk, who have said that IS retains only 1 percent of its territory, the officials said.

Bolton stressed, however, that the entire national security team agreed that victory over IS had to be enduring, which means more than taking away its territory.

Trump was not dissuaded, according to the officials, who said the president quickly capitulated by pledging to withdraw, shocking both Bolton and Erdogan.

Ignore the judgmental conclusions of NBC (and presumably its sources) – “put Trump on the defensive” and “quickly capitulated,” for instance – and notice that the advisers admitted that ISIS is 99% defeated and has no territorial base.  Is it a cancer that will metastasize? Well, ask yourself if Dr. Erdogan and Dr. bin Salman have the capacity to eradicate the remaining 1%.

NBC naturally ignores the rest of the story of the phone call: what Erdogan gave in return. I noted it yesterday, though:

Reuters reports:

Turkey will take over the fight against Islamic State militants in Syria as the United States withdraws its troops, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday, in the latest upheaval wrought by Washington's abrupt policy shift.

For Turkey, the step removes a source of friction with the United States.  Erdogan has long castigated his NATO ally over its support for Syrian Kurdish YPG fighters against Islamic State.  Turkey considers the YPG a terrorist group and an offshoot of the armed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), fighting for Kurdish autonomy across the border on Turkish soil.

In a speech in Istanbul, Erdogan said Turkey would mobilize to fight remaining Islamic State forces in Syria and temporarily delay plans to attack Kurdish fighters in the northeast of Syria – shifts both precipitated by the American decision to withdraw.

Scott Morefield of The Daily Caller reminds us of Trump adviser Steven Miller’s defense of the Syria pullout, which addresses the major concern about the residual 1%:

White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller summed up the president’s view during a Thursday night appearance with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

“This president got elected to get our foreign policy back on the right track after years of being adrift,” Miller said. “One foreign policy blunder after another in Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya hasn’t worked out for our national interest.”

“And let’s talk about Syria,” he added. “Let’s talk about the fact — ISIS is the enemy of Russia. ISIS is the enemy of Assad. ISIS is the enemy of Turkey. Are we supposed to stay in Syria for generation after generation, spilling American blood to fight the enemies of all those countries? Wolf, when did the American people sign up to be in every war in every place in every side of every conflict all over planet earth?”

Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit calls our attention to a factor that must be kept in mind whenever a foreign policy decision of Trump is criticized for being rash, impulsive, or ignorant, beause he hasn’t followed established procedures for vetting his moves:

The process complaints about the Syria withdrawal are hollow. Had Trump followed a normal bureaucratic process, is there any doubt withdrawal would've been stymied, and likely blocked? Virtually everyone in the "natsec" apparatus is against it. The "process" is itself the problem

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) December 22, 2018

The framework that has governed US foreign policy for the last 7 decades is obsolete. The other powers of the industrialized world were in ruins and the US was so preeminent that only we could stand up against the communist bloc. Nobody else could fill the role of guardian of freedom. But today, we have all our old competitors like Germany and Japan back, we have new industrial powers, preeminently China, gaining ground on us as we bleed – literally our troops and figuratively our funds.

Staying locked into that framework is suicide on the installment plan. With the rise of violent Islamic fundamentalism, the pockets of conflict have multiplied, and the prospects of complete victory declined.  In other words, we face the very real danger of endless war, as our ability to even staff the armed forces comes into question, with so many of our youth obese, unsure about fighting in hellholes overseas for vague goals, and with minimal unemployment offering attractive alterative careers.