The Daily Signal - What You Need to Know About Trump's Syria Move
Episode Date: October 9, 2019Heritage Foundation foreign policy expert Jim Carafano weighs in on President Donald Trump’s decision to move troops around in Syria, after talking with the Turkish president. Carafano explains how ...this will affect the Kurds, whether it could boost ISIS, and why we’re in Syria in the first place. We also cover these stories: Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., says he’s inviting Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about Ukraine. Over half of the country is on board with starting an impeachment inquiry, according to a new poll from The Washington Post and Schar School. Sexually transmitted diseases are increasing in the United States. The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, Pippa, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at letters@dailysignal.com. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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This is the Daily Signal podcast for Wednesday, October 9th.
I'm Rachel Del Judice.
And I'm Kate Trinko.
Today we'll chat with Heritage Foundation foreign policy expert Jim Carapano
about President Trump's decision to move troops around in Syria.
after talking with the Turkish president.
Karifano explains how this will affect the Kurds,
whether it could boost ISIS,
and why we're in Syria in the first place.
Also, if you're enjoying this podcast,
please be sure to leave a review
or a five-star rating on iTunes
and encourage others to subscribe.
Now on to our top news.
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Tuesday
for a series of cases related to sex discrimination
and whether gender identity
and sexual orientation
discrimination could be considered to fall under the umbrella of sex discrimination.
One case, for instance, was about whether a funeral home was okay to fire a transgender employee,
a biological male who wanted to wear female clothing to work.
Justice Samuel Alito said, quote,
You're trying to change the meaning of what Congress understood sex to mean in 1964.
According to USA Today, Alito, of course, was referring to when the Civil Rights Act was
passed. USA Today also reported the Justice Sonia Sotomayor said, quote,
We can't deny that homosexuals are being fired merely for being who they are, and not because
of religious reasons, not because they are performing their jobs poorly.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina says he's inviting Rudy Giuliani,
President Trump's lawyer, to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about Ukraine
following reports of corruption within the firing of Ukraine's former prosecutor.
General Victor Shokin. Graham tweeted, quote,
Have heard on numerous occasions disturbing allegations by Rudy Giuliani about corruption in
Ukraine and the many improprieties surrounding the firing of former prosecutor
general Victor Shokin. Graham added, quote, given the House of Representatives' behavior,
it's time for the Senate to inquire about corruption and other improprieties involving Ukraine.
Therefore, I will offer to Mr. Giuliani the opportunity to come before the Senate Judiciary Committee
to inform the committee of his concerns, end quote.
The Trump administration prohibited Gordon Soundland,
the U.S. ambassador to the European Union,
from testifying to Congress on Tuesday.
President Trump tweeted,
I would love to send Ambassador Sondland,
a really good man and great American, to testify.
But unfortunately, he would be testifying
before a totally compromised kangaroo court,
where Republicans' rights have been taken away
and true facts are not allowed.
loud out for the public."
Sondland's lawyer, Robert Luskin, said in a statement that the ambassador was, quote,
profoundly disappointed that he will not be able to testify.
House Democrats, meanwhile, announced they intended to subpoena Sondland with committee
chairman's representatives Adam Schiff, Elliott Engel, and Elijah Cummings saying in a statement,
we consider this interference to be obstruction of the impeachment inquiry.
Over half the country is on board with starting an impeachment inquiry, according to a new poll from the Washington Post in Sharr School.
The early October poll found that 58% of Americans support Democrats' impeachment push.
Among Democrats, eight in ten support impeachment proceedings, and seven and ten Republicans don't support it.
The support for impeachment has grown since July, where a similar poll from the Washington Post and ABC,
found that 59% of Americans did not support impeachment efforts.
Sexually transmitted diseases are increasing in the United States,
according to a new report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A press release from the CDC noted,
combined cases of syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia
reached an all-time high in the United States in 2018.
There were 115,000 cases of syphilis,
including 1,300 among newborns,
nearly 600,000 cases of gonorrhea and over 1.7 million cases of chlamydia.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is warning the MBA not to prioritize money over the free speech and democracy push in Hong Kong.
McConnell tweeted Tuesday, quote,
The people of Hong Kong have risked much more than money to defend their freedom of expression, human rights, and autonomy.
I hope the MBA can learn from that courage and not abandon those values for the sake of.
of their bottom line."
Houston Rockets general manager, Darry,
tweeted over the weekend in support
of pro-democracy efforts in Hong Kong.
His tweet has since been deleted,
and the NBA has been under fire over its China stance.
Over the weekend, talk show hosts Ellen DeGeneres
sat next to George W. Bush at a Cowboys game,
and some people were pretty worked up about it.
DeGeneres addressed the issue on her show,
and here's what she had to say.
During the game, they showed a shot of George and me
laughing together.
And so people were upset.
They thought, why is a gay Hollywood liberal
sitting next to a conservative Republican president?
Didn't even notice I'm holding the brand new iPhone 11.
But a lot of people were mad, and they did what people do
when they're mad.
They tweet.
But here's one tweet that I loved.
This person says, Ellen and George Bush together
makes me have faith in America again.
And I'm friends with George Bush.
In fact, I'm friends with a lot of people who don't share the same
beliefs that I have. We're all different, and I think that we've forgotten that that's okay
that we're all different. For instance, I wish people wouldn't wear fur. I don't like it, but I'm
friends with people who wear fur. And I'm friends with people who are furry, as a matter of fact.
I have friends who should tweez more. And I have, but just because I don't agree with someone
on everything doesn't mean that I'm not going to be friends with them. When I say be kind to one
another, I don't mean only the people that think the same way that you do. I mean be kind to everyone.
Well, it's 2019, and that is a bold stance, apparently.
Next up, we'll have my interview with Jim Carafano about what's going on in Syria and what you need to know.
Exciting news for heritage members.
Our 2019 Presidents Club is taking place October 21 through 23 in Washington, D.C.
This is an exclusive event for heritage members to hear directly from our experts and other conservative leaders.
This year, that includes Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State.
Mike Pompeo. To learn more about how you can attend, please call 1-800-546-2843. That's 1-800-546-2843. So amid the news,
the U.S. is pulling troops out of the area of Syria near the Turkish border. There's been, well, an uproar.
President Trump came under fire from several top Republicans, including Senators Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell.
Senator Rand Paul, on the other hand, applauded Trump's move.
Joining us today to discuss and explain is Jim Carapano, who is the vice president of the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at the Heritage Foundation.
Jim, thanks for joining us.
Good to be with you.
Okay.
So first off, when did U.S. troops first go to Syria and what was the purpose?
So if you remember under President Obama, we still had a very significant U.S. presence in Iraq.
that was the result of the second Iraq war.
And in about 2011, we made a decision to withdraw all those troops.
And after we withdraw all those troops, there was a resurgence of an Islamist uprising in Iraq.
And that linked with an insurgency in Syria.
And that became known as a group that's known as ISIS and established what they called the historical caliphate.
And indeed, the capital of the caliphate was in Syria.
And so under President Obama, we sent troops not just back into Iraq to help deal with combating ISIS, but we also started to send troops into Syria.
When President Trump came in office, he actually expanded the U.S. footprint in Syria because the military advisors made the argument that you couldn't take down the calabate.
In other words, destroy the physical state that the terrorists had.
if we didn't actually have forces in there working with indigenous groups that were fighting ISIS,
chief among them, the YPG, which is an armed Kurdish group.
And so President Trump actually increased the U.S. footprint in Syria.
Then subsequent to that, after the caliphate was destroyed, the president wanted to withdraw U.S. troops,
the military advisors and several allies, including Israel, said, well, look, there's still concerns that need to be addressed.
So we've maintained a small footprint in Syria for the last Eurso.
So about how many American troops are in Syria right now?
And what is up until this point, I guess, what was the end game?
What were we looking for to happen before we withdrew them?
Well, that's a great question.
So we don't have exact numbers on U.S. forces and where they are.
That's not surprising.
These are ongoing military operations.
They don't necessarily advertise exactly who's where and what they're doing.
But we estimate it's a relatively small print of a few hundred Americans in uniform that are spread around the areas that are not controlled by the Syrian government.
So the question is, is why should they stay there?
What are they there for and when can they leave?
And normally where you start with the question of what are our interests?
What are we trying to accomplish to protect America's interests?
And then the question is, well, how long do you have to do that?
And the decision is based on conditions, right?
Not necessarily on a calendar or a specific date, but when the conditions concerning American
security are met, and our interest in Syria are really three.
And this is what today.
I mean, we can talk about what happened last week, last month, last year, a decade ago.
It doesn't matter.
That's all in the past.
Those are sunk costs.
Can't do anything about that.
All we can do is deal with the security of Americans into the future.
So our concerns are number one.
We don't want another caliphate, right?
The last thing we would want is that the terrorist groups would be able to coales build a state-like group in Syria like they had before or like we saw in Afghanistan before 9-11 where they could just not attract thousands of foreign fighters from around the world to build up an army of transnational Islamist terrorists, but where they could direct and raise money and focus operations aimed at attacking the United States like we saw happened to another.
9-11, like we saw ISIS try to do against the United States.
So we don't want to return to the caliphate.
That's number one.
We don't want an organized terrorist group sitting in the middle of the Middle East.
Number two is we don't want the problems of Syria to stay in Syria.
If you remember a couple of years ago, we had millions of refugees flooding into Western Europe, destabilizing our key allies, flooding into the region, destabilizing important countries like Jordan, and flooding with them, not to bring the problem of mass refugees, but terrorists actually infiltrating.
in the refugee flows to these other countries in those refugee flows trying to sneak into the
United States. So we don't want more of that. We don't want mass refugee flows. We want the war in
Syria to remain contained in Syria. And the third is we don't want Iran to be able to establish a
platform in Syria that they can really use to threaten Israel, which is our closest ally in the
Middle East. If you remember the Syrian government,
is in many ways a surrogate for Iranian influence and control.
They rely on the Iranians, take hate people in power.
They rely on the Iranians and the Russians to fund them and arm them.
And under the guise of supporting the Syrians,
the Iranians have been moving more and more military assets, personnel, into Syria,
and not just using that to defend Assad and his regime,
Assad, the president of Syria and his regime,
but also to build logistical lines, like a super highway,
to hook up with Hamas, which is a terrorist-gris.
group in Lebanon, and then directly to create another platform to threaten to attack Israel.
So what do we have to do? We don't want to caliphate. We don't want masses of refugees and
massive genocide and human rights challenges flooding into the region. And we don't want Iran to use
Syria as a platform to attack Israel. Now, that doesn't answer the question of how many troops do we
need and how long do we need them there? But what it does say is the troops that we have there,
are they materially contributing to this mission? And if they are, there's an argument they should
state. If they aren't, there's an argument they should leave. Okay. So let's move to the news we got
this week. So we know that President Trump had a call with the Turkish president. After that call,
he announced, as you said, we don't know the exact locations, but American troops would not be in the
part of Syria near the Turkish border.
This was widely interpreted as saying Turkey could invade.
The administration has pushed back and said no.
President Trump tweeted a very intense tweet saying that Turkey was not going to be allowed to do
whatever it wanted.
So how should we interpret these events and why, if not, to allow a Turkish invasion, would
the U.S. move these troops out of this area?
Let's start by what the Turks are doing.
So they're not invading Syria.
There is a portion of Syria which borders Turkey, which right now is kind of uncontrolled.
Nobody really controls the border.
The Syrian government doesn't control the border.
There are Kurdish groups in that area.
And the Turks want to control that area.
It's several kilometers wide.
So it's really a small chunk of Syria.
Why do they want to control it?
Well, one, they don't want it to be a platform for Kurdish terrorist groups.
Not the Kurdish people.
There's a difference, right?
There are Kurds all over the region.
They're Kurds in Iran.
There are Kurds in Iraq.
There are Kurds in Syria.
There are Kurds in other places.
So when you say the Kurds, that's a lot of people spread all over the Middle East.
But there are Kurdish groups which are affiliated with specific terrorist groups like the PKK, which is a terrorist group, which focuses on attacking Turkey.
So they don't want terrorist groups to use that area as a platform to attack Turkey.
they want to control their border
and they would like to create a space
because they have probably a million refugees
or more from Syria that are living in Turkey
the Turks would like to create a space
so those people can move back into Syria.
So it's a relatively limited objective
that the Turks have outlined.
What did the U.S. do?
Well, if you actually read the statement
of the Department of Defense,
which actually explains is,
we didn't give permission for the Turks to do this.
They didn't ask,
permission. And the reality is, is we can't stop them from doing this. We have a couple of hundred
soldiers in the entire country. We don't have enough to have people to prevent the Turks from doing
anything unless we're going to start bombing the Turkish military, which I don't think we're going to
do. So they didn't ask our permission. They said they were going to do this. And what we did,
which was actually probably appropriate, we made sure that Americans weren't in harm's way.
So if things went bad, our guys wouldn't get hurt. You know, we should be really clear here, because
what the U.S. government did do, they said, look, you're going in here. You are responsible for what you do.
There are civilians in there. Protecting those civilians, you're going in. That's your job now.
There are thousands of ISIS fighters detained in that area. If you wind up taking control of them, you're responsible for them.
If those guys are running, get out and they're running around the country, you have to capture them and detain them, right?
Because if those guys, bad guys spill out, that's your fault.
So I don't think we left the Turks off the hook at all.
And here's what I very clearly say.
If the Turks do what they said they're going to do, I think it's actually good for everybody.
If they screw this up, let's be really clear here.
The people that are responsible is the Turkish government.
So you mentioned the Kurds and how some Kurds are members of terrorist groups.
So what has the U.S.'s relationship with the Kurds been?
like over the years and how have we been working or not working with them in Syria?
And what would you say?
I mean, one of the big objections against this has been, you know, the U.S. friends,
the Kurds, how can you do this?
So let's delve into that a little bit.
Yeah.
So the first thing I would say is the United States has been a great friend to the Kurdish people.
And there is no population on earth that is more appreciative of America, that more wants to be like America than Kurds.
There is a massive Kurdish population in Iraq.
It's really almost a semi-autonomous little country onto itself.
That is the most pro-American place on earth.
They believe in free enterprise.
They believe in democracy.
They believe in human rights.
They host other refugee populations.
They would be the 51st state if we let them, right?
The United States has spent a lot of time and effort helping the Kurdish people.
And as you know, Iraq is a fragmented country.
the Shia, the Sunni, their Kurds.
We've done an awful lot to help those groups get along with each other, and we've invested
enormous resources and had great success in having the Iraqi Kurds establish a productive
working relationship with the Turkish Kurds.
So there is a significant Kurdish population in Syria, which is similar.
Now, among that, there are political groups and there are armed groups.
The one we're talking about specifically is called the YPG, which is a sub-tube.
subset of a group called the SDF.
They are an armed militia that we partnered with to help fight ISIS and to track down
ISIS guys and detain them.
And indeed, they're detaining many of these good.
They're not an ally.
Look, they're very, very good fighters.
That doesn't make them nice guys.
And to be fair, defeating the caliphate would, as rapidly as we did under president,
Trump would not have been possible without arming them.
Having said that, they're not an ally of the United States.
We don't really owe them anything other than we made a transactional deal to work with them to defeat the caliphate.
And we have transactional deals to help them when they do them as they're helpful to us.
As long as we're fulfilling that obligation, a transactional obligation, I think we're okay.
You know, people always say, well, the Turks are going to kill these guys.
Well, if the YPG declares, has a war with the Turkish military, they are.
They probably will shoot each other, right?
One of the things the United States could do is help broker that they, because they shouldn't be fighting each other.
And the Turks have a legitimate concern about terrorists.
And so I think the United States does have a positive political role to play in kind of brokering relations.
between Kurdish groups in Syria and the Turks.
And we have a good track record of that.
So, again, I think the presumption that this is doom and gloom,
and we've left our allies to die,
I don't think there's a lot of evidence for that.
I think there are fair, legitimate concerns
that this could not go well.
There are things the United States can do
to help talk to both sides, to mitigate some of that.
and there's a lot the United States can do
to put a spotlight on the Turks
to hold them accountable
for what they do in Syria.
If you go back to the first question,
what are we there for?
That's actually the best way
to protect our interests.
I mean, we have limited interests in Syria,
we have limited capabilities,
and we have limited influence.
The question is how to use that best.
You know, these people that talk about
a couple hundred soldiers,
which, to be honest,
are a speed bump to bad actors in that country.
They're not going to end the war in Syria.
They're not going to solve the problem.
They're not going to protect the Kurds.
The U.S. can be a limited force for good.
And the question is, is how do we do that?
How do we best leverage our footprint to be a limited force for good?
And I would just add to that.
The one thing the president never said is, I'm pulling every American troop out of Syria.
He offered to do that before, and people convinced him it was a bad idea.
He's agreed that if there are things that U.S. troops in Syria need to do to be helpful,
they should stay and do that.
That policy that our president-enunciated, that policy has not changed.
So President Trump tweeted on Tuesday that the president of Turkey, Erdogan, was going to be coming to Washington in November.
What do you think they should focus on in that meeting?
Well, there's a lot of issues that could talk about both good and bad.
And I always think it's great.
I think our president is very courageous.
He is, look, if there's somebody that the relationship with the human,
United States is important, he will talk to them, and he doesn't care if he gets criticized for it,
it yelled at or anything. He'll have an honest conversation with that person. I think that's
great. There are good things and bad things in the U.S. Turkish relationship. I think they're all
worth discussing. Making sure Turkey understands it's accountable for what it does in Syria, that to me
would be kind of line one. The Turkish government has been very insistent that they want to buy an air
defense system, or they've already purchased this, they've already had delivery a part of it, called
the S-400s built by the Russians. Turkey was also a very insistent. Turkey was also a very insistent.
a partner in the F-35, which is our modern fighter program, those are not compatible.
If you turn on an S-400, it just tells you too much about an F-35 to make us feel comfortable.
It basically compromises the mission to the aircraft.
So you can fly against them, right?
They're the bad guys and we're the good guys, but you can't fly in an area where the S-400 treats the F-35 like a good guy.
because that means it knows everything about the F-35,
and then you can turn that against it.
And it doesn't matter that the Turks own the system
and the Russians don't.
The Russians will get all that information, right?
So the U.S. policy has been,
if you really want to buy this S-400,
you cannot have the F-35.
I think it's a bad deal for Turkey.
The F-35 is a tremendous aircraft.
The S-400 is an okay air defense system.
Turkey really doesn't need an air defense system.
What they really need is really good fighter jets.
There's a way to resolve that issue,
and the way to resolve it is for the Turks to shelve the S-400.
They should talk about that,
because in the long run, it's in the best interests of Turkey,
not to mention best interest to the United States.
There are, we've got to talk about the difficult things.
We have these ISIS detainees.
They don't need to be running around loose.
Obviously, they can't be tortured and, you know,
But they don't need to be running around where they can hurt people, the U.S.
And many of them are actually Europeans.
And the Europeans may be very sensibly say, we don't want these guys back, right?
We have to do something with them.
And the U.S. and Turkey have to work on that problem together.
Trade.
Turkey's economy is in horrible shape.
Say what you want about Erdogan.
I think he's actually very bad at foreign policy, but he's even worse as an economic leader.
I think Turkey economy is not doing well.
U.S. Turkish trade.
There's a lot of constructive, positive things we could do.
So that is a pretty full agenda.
I could absolutely see where it's worthwhile for Erdogan to come here for the president to set out with him.
You bet.
Okay.
A few more questions.
Senator Lindsey Graham said that of Trump's decision, this decision virtually reassures the reemergence of ISIS.
Are you worried about that happening?
Well, I am worried about ISIS and al-Qaeda.
globally.
So this is kind of a good news, bad news story.
And we've learned a lesson on this.
Regardless of what you thought of the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan and Bush and everything else,
by the end of Bush's term, we had put a lot of pressure on al-Qaeda and groups like ISIS.
And the threat of transnational terrorism subsided significantly.
and President Obama benefited that, came in office.
And about halfway through his first term,
he basically kind of decided the war and terror was over.
And so he pulled the troops out of Iraq.
We backed off in a lot of areas.
And basically what we saw is like if you think of those scenes
where there's a forest fire and then the fire is out
and everybody leaves and then the sparks flare up
and the forest fire kicks in again,
that's exactly what happened.
So we went from very high level of global terrorist threat
to a low level,
to essentially walking away from the problem and see it reignite.
And when Trump came back in office, we did a significant job of kind of putting the forest fire out again.
The challenge now is we have to watch the ember.
So I'm sympathetic what Senator Graham says is if we walk away from worrying about transnational terrorism, it'll definitely come back.
Where I would differ is is what's the most efficacious way to do that?
And there's an argument that let's have American troops everywhere doing everything.
There's a better argument, I think, which the president has made is there are things that we should be doing.
There are things that our friends and allies should be doing.
And we should all be working at keeping watch to make sure the fire doesn't come back together.
And in the end, that's more sustainable and will also be more effective.
And so I'm not sure that Senator Graham's right that the answer is we put American troops everywhere all the time because we're worried about far.
forest fires. Okay. So you briefly mentioned Russia. Obviously, Syria is in the Middle East.
If Turkey does make this move to, as you say, more control their border with Syria,
does this have a ripple effect into the Middle East and regional stability and also potentially
globally with Russia and everyone else? Well, I definitely think that the stability of the Middle
East is important in the United States. The United States is a global power with global interest,
global responsibilities.
Europe, the Middle East, the Indo-Pacific,
the places were very active.
They connect us to the world.
That's why we're there.
You know, we don't need the Middle East
to be the land of milk and honey.
Everybody doesn't have to be, you know,
dancing with flowers.
But it has to be stable,
and it has to be not falling apart,
and there can't be big wars,
and refugees can't be flooding out,
and, you know,
oil can't be burning in giant bonfires, right?
So keeping the problems in Syria is important,
Turkey does have a role to play to that.
Having said that, Turkey's not like, you know, they're a pivotal player, but, but, you know,
they're not the only player in the Middle East.
They're not the only player in NATO and Europe.
Yet they do have relations with the Russians and the Iranians, but the problem with, for Turkey
is they can't be everybody's friend all the time.
I mean, the reality is, is what's best for Turkey is actually what's best for the United States,
which is a peaceful Western Europe, a peace of.
Middle East, who are the two biggest agitators to that, Iran and Russia? So at the end of the day,
the Turks can have relations with the Russians and the Iranians. I get that. They're neighbors.
But the Russians and the Iranians are the root of the problem. And I think we have a Turkish foreign
policy that sometimes tries to somehow, you know, ignore the reality of that.
So, you know, I've quoted Senator Graham and mentioned that Senator Paul was a fan of President Trump's move.
President Trump himself tweeted hashtag end endless wars with one of his tweets about this.
And it seems like at least President Trump is trying to relate this to the big debate on the right right now about foreign policy,
about how long do you stay in places in this, you know, new landscape with terrorism.
Do you think that this decision has repercussions for the foreign policy ideology?
theology on the right? No. Well, first of all, I hate the whole endless war thing because the reality is the United States is not fighting endless wars. We have a couple of hundred folks in Syria. We're not fighting a war in Syria. The Syrians are fighting wars. They're fighting wars with each other. We're providing advice and assistance to that mission. It's not our war. We're not going to win it. We're not going to lose it. We don't own it. We have troops in Afghanistan. They're not fighting an endless war in Afghanistan.
I mean, we've been in Afghanistan for 20 years, but we're not fighting war, but we're providing advice and assistance to the Afghan military.
That's not an endless war.
As a fact, we have troops all over the world doing counterterrorism missions, logistical support, advice.
Very, very similar to what we're doing in Syria and Afghanistan.
They're not fighting wars either.
They're also not the world's policemen.
They're not around trying to keep order in the world.
They're around protecting America's interests.
We're a global power with global interests and responsibilities.
They're out there doing their job.
that's not going to stop.
When you talk about a specific mission
in Afghanistan and Syria and other places,
how long should the troops be there?
How many?
Again, it's based on what are our interests,
what's important for us to do?
And then what are they done?
Well, when we've met the conditions
that protect our interests, they can leave.
Sometimes that changed in morphers.
You know, we had the war ended in 1945
in Western Europe.
FDR told us all the troops to be home in two years.
I mean, he was off by a little, right?
We're still there, right?
Now, the reality is, is we don't still have troops in Western Europe because of World War II.
We have troops in Western Europe because they're doing other things, which are very important to us.
In many cases, the things that those troops are doing in Western Europe are there because they go from Europe to other parts of the world who would address other things.
So we have this myopic public debate because we have these kind of manichaean debates about everything in public life.
It's either good or evil and there's no in between.
So we're either in endless feudal wars or we're conquering the world.
The reality is the United States isn't doing any of those things.
You know, President Trump, you can debate particular things.
You could certainly debate his rhetoric on his tweets, but his fundamental gut instinct.
thinks of how to be president of the United States on foreign. They're about right, which is,
you do what you need to do to protect the country, and you do it as long as you need to do it.
I'm kind of okay with that. Okay. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Jim.
Thank you.
And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast,
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