In this essay for The Washington Post, written after President Trump's surprise Christmastime visit to U.S. troops in Iraq, Elliot Ackerman argues that troops coming home doesn't mean a war is over, and that a total withdrawal is more likely to signal a war lost than won.
Peace Requires Some Troops to Stay
Ackerman argues that America's wars which produced a lasting peace, from the Civil War to World War II, required troops to remain afterward, as they still do in Germany and Japan, while President Obama's full 2011 withdrawal from Iraq forced a redeployment within years once the Islamic State swept through the country.
The Sanctuary Problem
Ackerman warns that withdrawing from Syria risks recreating the sanctuary problem that plagued Vietnam, where enemy safe havens in Cambodia and Laos went unaddressed, citing a Pentagon inspector general estimate of more than 30,000 remaining Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria.
Patton's Christmas Lesson
Ackerman closes with Gen. George S. Patton's refusal to withdraw during the Battle of the Bulge, fought the same Christmas week 74 years earlier near where Trump's plane refueled at Ramstein Air Base: "I don't like to pay for the same real estate twice."
Read the Original Article
This essay originally appeared in The Washington Post.