Maness: Why The Swamp Is Wrong and President Trump Is Right on Syria

Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, I have been directly involved in advising the country’s top National Security Team in planning and executing the United States and Allied Powers response to the attacks.

I’ve trained troops to deploy, supervised and conducted intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance operations and deployed myself in the first Operation Enduring Freedom, as well as Operation Iraqi Freedom as a commander.

My support for President Trump’s decisions to bring American forces out of Syria now and soon Afghanistan is informed not only by my experiences since 9/11, but also four decades of military and civilian experience planning and executing national security policy. I have studied national security matters under retired US Marine Lt General Mick Trainor at Harvard, and many other great thinkers at the U.S. College of Naval Warfare.

As you can see from my background, I’m no pacifist, but I’ve also seen the horrors of war firsthand and understand that military force should always be a final resort and that it is the duty of the Commander in Chief to bring our troops home as soon as the stated mission is complete.

Unlike the bipartisan foreign policy swamp, which has been consistently proven wrong about nearly every major military decision of the last decade, President Trump has overseen a clear, steady and realist foreign policy, focused on putting America First. From re-building America’s military, destroying ISIS, ending the Iran deal, de-escalating tensions with North Korea, he has consistently proven the naysayers in the foreign policy swamp wrong.

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