Add Syria to laudable U.S. withdrawals from Afghanistan, Iraq

Trump entered office with 3 hot U.S. wars: Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

He escalated Iraq and Syria with bombings and refusal to withdraw U.S. troops.

But Trump sensibly negotiated a peace deal with the Afghan Taliban in January, 2020, promising to fully withdraw from that U.S. devastated country by May, 2021. The Taliban, an inexorable force that no country could defeat, responded by ending attacks on U.S. forces. Not one U.S. soldier has died there since.

But forces including the military, weapons contractors, pro war pundits, even many Democrats, opposed the withdrawal. Their opposition, combined with Trump’s governing incompetence, kicked the can of criminal war to Trump’s successor.

Biden took up the challenge, and, adding just 4 months to Trump’s timeline, will complete U.S. withdrawal next month.

Biden has also signaled likely end to U.S. forces in Iraq. The Iraqi Prime Minister and Parliament kicked us out in January, 2020, after our dastardly assassination of top ranking Iran and Iraqi leaders at the Bagdad Airport.

But since we refused to leave, Iraqi militias have continued to target the 2,500 U.S. troops there. With nothing left to accomplish, and U.S. lives to lose, we may see Biden declare an end to that criminal war as well.

But sadly, Biden displays no plans to withdraw our 900 troops from civil war torn Syria. In ten years since its March, 2011 start, over a half million have died, six million have become refugees and 12 million face starvation.

Much of that death and degraded life stems from U.S. involvement early on to overthrow Syrian leader Bashar-al-Assad. Just a year in, Assad was on the cusp of victory. Then the U.S. poured in billions to arm and train Syrian rebels, many of the terrorist variety, to achieve their long sought dream of Syrian regime change. All those billions were squandered on a failed mission adding enormously to the death toll.

While Trump did withdraw a majority of U.S. troops, he left that residual force of 900 to keep Syrian oil resources from their rightful owner. That theft, combined with senseless bombings and life crippling sanctions constitutes illegal, immoral and criminal warfare against the Syrian people.

Assuming Biden achieves the Afghan and Iraqi troop withdrawals, he needs to complete the peace initiative trifecta by withdrawing all U.S. forces from Syria and ceasing all bombings and sanctions which do nothing but degrade and destroy life for the Syrian people.