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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 26, 2024

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It seems like an incredibly pedantic distinction to say that Donald Trump expanding US involvement in Middle Eastern and African conflicts doesn't count because the US was technically already involved. It doesn't support the notion of Trump the peacemonger.

This gets to a lot of broader technical questions: How deeply should the US be involved in the Middle East? What counts as a "war"? How much responsibility does the president have over American foreign policy vis-a-vis the rest of the foreign policy establishment? What would a different president theoretically have done? etc. etc.

Ultimately: the blob released information accusing Syria and Assad of using chemical weapons on the people of Syria. Trump responded by bombing an airport tarmac. I don't think you can call that "expanding US involvement" in the Middle East. That's the incident OP was referring to. I don't consider it a very serious accusation that Trump somehow abandoned his position to not start another war. We can compare it against all sorts of hypothetical other presidencies. And we can compare it against Obama and Bush, who both literally started wars in the Middle East.

You can call me pedantic, but, ultimately, I think your idea that Trump "expanded US involvement" in the Middle East can only be true in a pedantic sense. On the basis everyone understands, cares about, and talked about in 2016: Trump did not start any new wars. He did not perpetrate Afghistan, Libya, or Iraq. And that leaves us with boring technical questions about whether, for example, Trump allowed himself to be misled by generals who tried to prevent him from pulling out of Afghanistan. Certainly, nobody in the MAGA coalition feels all that betrayed by Trump's promises in the Middle East that he bombed an inconsequential airport tarmac in Syria (a country with which we are technically not at war, with which US foreign policy has been deeply entangled since the Obama years at minimum).

You can call me pedantic, but, ultimately, I think your idea that Trump "expanded US involvement" in the Middle East can only be true in a pedantic sense.

It is true in the literal, material sense that in a number of places, Trump continued or substantially expanded US military involvement in conflicts in the Middle East and Africa, e.g. US involvement in Syria under Trump was by no means limited to an isolated bombing. The US was heavily involved in the Battle of Raqqa. The Battle of Khasham saw US forces killing Russian troops. In Somalia, US involvement went from nominal to almost weekly strikes. Similarly, strikes in Yemen were massively expanded (Trump also vetoed disengagement).

Certainly, nobody in the MAGA coalition feels all that betrayed by Trump's promises in the Middle East that he bombed an inconsequential airport tarmac in Syria

Perhaps they're not as anti-interventionist as they claim? Or maybe they just don't pay much attention to foreign policy?