It appears that President Trump will soon get a long ways toward keeping one of his campaign promises he made in 2016. Repeatedly he claimed he would end the “endless” wars of the near past in American history.
Presidents in the near past have sent American troops into harm’s way more often than not. After World War 2, the following have been (and this is not an exhaustive list) committed to these ‘wars’, large and small. President Harry Truman rallied the nation to defend South Korea in 1950 at the cost of over 35,000 war dead. President Eisenhower sent money and ‘advisors’ into South Vietnam in the 1950s and in 1961 John Kennedy increased our presence in that Asian nation, and rattled swords at the Soviet Union, putting the country on high alert over the Cuban Missile Crisis. What we call the Vietnam War was made into a conflict that would kill over 57,000 Americans by President Johnson’s actions, and he sent 22,000 ‘peacekeeping troops’ into the .Dominican Republic in 1965.
Such did not stop with Richard Nixon, who, although campaigning in 1968 on a ‘secret’ plan to end the Vietnam War, widened it by allowing U. S. troops to enter Cambodia and Laos. After his resignation, Gerald Ford rescued the crew of a U. S. ship taken in Southeast Asia by sending in soldiers to do so. President Jimmy Carter oversaw a failed rescue attempt of our Iranian Hostages in 1980, and Ronald Reagan had U. S. forces oust a communist regime in the Caribbean nation of Grenada. President George H. W. Bush led a coalition of mostly American servicemen in the liberation of Kuwait during his administration. Even during the prosperous terms of Bill Clinton we saw U. S. forces engaged in places in the Balkans.
More recently, George W. Bush presided over the two ‘wars’ in the Middle East; first with Afghanistan and then with Iraq. Barack Obama engaged us in the war against ISIS, and in the attempt to oust the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, and helped in the Libyan fiasco. We still have tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Diego Garcia, plus others stationed in more than 150 countries around the world.
But now, with the nomination of two men, William Ruger as ambassador to Afghanistan, and General Frank McKenzie as head of Central Command, it seems that after three and a half years of nonstop opposition to anything Trump does that he is moving toward ending our active involvement in ‘forever’ wars. About half of the 8600 troops in Afghanistan will be coming home by mid-October and 2200 of the 5200 in Iraq will be back in the U. S. by the end of September.
In addition to that, about a third of the 35,000 troops still stationed in Germany will be brought back.
But our presence in a joint exercise with the nation of Georgia with the French and British is troubling, as the three nations send a ‘message’ to Russia.
But a second term for Donald Trump will see a significant reduction in our military footprint overseas, and from my viewpoint it is long overdue. Other countries should not always depend on an American nuclear umbrella to protect their own borders, when those borders are thousands of miles from our own. Next might be a drawdown in South Korea where about 25,000 American soldiers are, and from Japan and the bases we occupy in that Asian nation.
We could use the money spent on overseas ‘adventures’ better to strengthen our military, and perhaps even close the border with Mexico, preventing more illegals from entering the U. S. It seems that when a man (so far at least it has been men) get to be the commander-in-chief they use the military to pursue ends which have little or no benefit to the country.
There will be foreign policy ‘hawks’ who will decry our pulling back from such foreign ventures, telling us that we cannot back off from commitments. But part of an America First policy is not to be the world’s policeman, sending our young men and women into harm’s way in nations that often do not appreciate the expenditure of American treasure and blood to shore up their own countries.
From having family members in the military in the Middle East since the first Iraq war, we know the emotional toll it takes on their loved ones. And our own small town has twice had the National Guard deployed to that war-town region, having one killed. For what? We should, as Americans, applaud President Trump for finally coming closer to fulfilling his promise to end our ‘forever’ wars. As a nation, as a people who cherish each member of our armed forces, we must say to Trump to get our troops home as quickly as possible.