A few days after then-U.S. President Donald Trump announced in October 2019 that he was pulling U.S. forces from Syria, I was waiting for an early morning train to New York City. As I hovered near the gate, I pretended to scroll Twitter as I listened in on a conversation between two Amtrak police officers. They were not discussing crime at Union Station or the latest gossip within their department but rather U.S. foreign policy. They supported the president’s move in Syria, agreeing with each other that the conflict many thousands of miles away had nothing to do with them or the United States. Bring the troops home; end the endless wars.
That moment reinforced for me something I had been shaking my head and muttering about for the better part of the previous seven years: the utter failure of the foreign-policy community to correctly assess what was happening in Syria, grasp how it affected U.S. interests (or not), and recommend a way forward. Trump—despite his loathsome presidency—had apparently asked a good question about Syria that was also relevant to the Middle East more generally: “Why are we doing what we are doing?” It seems he did not get a good enough answer and thus announced the withdrawal (which ended up being more of a redeployment).
