[shantly]

I'm (USA) left on just about any position you care to mention, and am worried more by the Kurd/Turkey thing's apparent ineptness and failure to fit any foreign policy plan whatsoever. Bumbling incompetence is less appealing to me than either well-executed, cold realpolitik, or failed but well-meaning attempts at actual moral leadership. It's about as bad as it gets, short of outright evil for evil's sake.

I also don't think it'd be inconsistent to oppose going into various wars in the Middle East, while also opposing recklessly withdrawing once we'd stuck our noses in already.

[nitwit005]

Yep, the lack of any plan is usually the issue. Often it's not even clear there is a goal.

The New York Times was recently criticizing Trump on the basis of him having reduced US influence due to his recent actions. I was a bit confused by that claim, as I wasn't sure what we needed the influence for. The previous stated goal was "defeating ISIS", which largely already happened. I have no real idea what the current goal was supposed to be.

[shantly]

Oh, yeah, to be clear I think that, given public information (you never know what secret crap's going on, same for Trump's moves, so we have to work with what we know), intervening in Syria to begin with—by which I mean encouraging and supplying the rebels, not the later anti-ISIS actions—was a massive humanitarian and geopolitical disaster, possibly a bigger blunder than (though related to) the invasion of Iraq, even, and I think that shouldn't have been too hard to predict from the start, not just an obvious-in-hindsight thing. It's a big part of why I don't hold Obama's (or Hillary's) actions on foreign policy in very high regard, to put it mildly.

[mhermher]

Sure, Trump is especially incompetent. But the same exact idea applied to Obama's reign and policy in Syria as well. You can forget about "saving the children of Aleppo", etc.