Coming: More US Troops in Syria and Iraq

Trump is just bad on most domestic issues and also when it comes to foreign policy.

There is almost nothing for a libertarian to cheer about from the Trump presidency.

The idea that he is going to bring troops home from foreign excursions is absurd. He is going to escalate U.S. involvement.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

President Donald Trump’s new strategy to accelerate the fight against Islamic State will, at least initially, tweak and add a little more muscle to the existing plan, U.S. officials said.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is expected to provide to Mr. Trump a series of recommendations for that plan in the coming days. Mr. Trump on Jan. 28 signed an order directing his new Pentagon chief to come up with a preliminary draft of the plan to fight Islamic State within 30 days.

The president will consider a range of options that are expected to include sending additional troops to Syria and Iraq, at least in limited numbers, according to U.S. officials.

Two other possible steps could involve loosening battlefield restrictions, the officials said. One such step would give commanders more decision-making power on the use of U.S. forces in the field. A second would ease rules designed to minimize civilian casualties, according to U.S. officials. Loosening the civilian casualty rules would have the effect of increasing the number and rate of operations against Islamic State, officials said...

Mr. Trump is aggressively exploring the option of creating informal safe zones in Syria, an idea that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has pushed for years. The Pentagon has long opposed the idea of creating official Syrian safe zones due to costs and necessary military commitments.

But there is growing receptiveness to the idea of setting up unofficial Syrian safe zones—which some officials have dubbed “interim de-escalation areas”—along the Turkey and Jordan borders.

   -RW