Following the defeat of the GOP in November's midterm elections, it seems that the president has determined to follow his own path more stridently than before. Shortly after Congress failed to provide the funding he requested for his signature border wall, he announced the withdrawal of US troops from Syria and a significant drawdown in Afghanistan. That decision prompted the swift resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis, the last of the former generals in the president's orbit who were regularly credited in the national media for "moderating" his foreign policy.
The national media and political establishment have reacted with a combination of pearl-clutching indignance and certainty that the inevitable implosion of the Trump administration has begun. Typical is a piece from Max Boot, who wrote that the removal of 2,000 odd soldiers from Syria will constitute "a giant gift to our enemies." Lindsey Graham wailed that Trump was "paving the way for a second 9/11." Dana Milbank has declared in no less venerable organ than the Washington Post that the drawdowns mark the final defeat of the United States in the Cold War. Among such pronouncements, the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth would not be considered out of place.
How did we get here, to the point that the withdrawal of a comparatively minuscule deployment of soldiers in a country with which the United States is not at war and to which we have not been invited is lamented as the beginning of the end for a once-proud nation? Ten years ago Barack Obama won the presidency in significant part on the back of a pledge to withdraw US soldiers from Iraq, a conflict in which the US had a much more direct stake and more than seventy times as many troops in place.
Doubtless, a significant part of this bizarre phenomenon is down to the fact that Donald Trump is president. Without his toxicity or his reputation as a bull with a fondness for china shops it's possible that national media would have simply noted the change and moved on, however grumpily the Defense Department responded. In any case, the decision to withdraw would certainly not have generated the hysteria we see if someone else had made it.
Granted, the decision-making process is not irrelevant here. Someone else would likely have made this decision in consultation with the military leadership and after careful reflection, not in the middle of a phone call with the President of Turkey. But there is a dangerous tendency to assume that because Trump himself is such a detestable individual and his decisionmaking process is tragically shallow that his decisions are mistaken by default.
As Trump's political troubles multiply - particularly with the coming conclusion of the Mueller investigation and Democratic control in the House of Representatives - it will become increasingly tempting and easy for his opponents to condemn all of his positions simply by association with him. The political and security establishments, both of which he has significantly undermined and unsettled, are in open opposition to him. That does not make those establishments friendly to the cause of everyday people in this country.
I viscerally oppose the President. But I do not oppose him on his own account, as so many Democratic and security establishment figures seem to. I do not believe, as obnoxious as he and a majority of the things he wants are, that he is the problem. The problem is a political establishment wholly dominated by corporate wealth. The problem is the repeated use of the US military and security services to enforce our preferred forms of social and economic organization beyond our borders. The problem is the ease with which the white lower and middle classes are convinced to turn on nonwhites rather than the people actually responsible for the state of the country. Donald Trump could resign tomorrow morning and none of those problems would be even incrementally closer to resolution.
It has been very easy for the Democratic Party in the last two years to believe that 2016 was a mistake - a flaw in the process manipulated past recognition by Trump's shadowy Russian allies - and not a verdict on the depressing smallness of Democratic proposals in the face of a populace all but crying out for genuine leadership. In their eyes, they had won. Barack Obama was a two term president and his heir apparent had come to collect her inheritance. The changing demographics of the country were favorable to their coalition. They believed they had a generational working majority secured, and that to remain relevant the Republicans would be compelled to bend in their direction.
Under their interpretation, all that is necessary to restore the proper order of things is the removal of Trump from office and his replacement by a suitable Democrat at the nearest opportunity. I could not disagree more strongly. Donald Trump has exposed with absolute clarity the absurdity of our politics. If we end up enduring his administration only to pretend that everything was fine beforehand, I'm afraid the fissures in our society will come to manifest themselves in still uglier ways.
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