In addition to the delightful headline, there is much to appreciate in the substance of “The Blob is Lying About Trump’s Sudden Syria Withdrawal.”

This essay by Mark Perry was published at foreignpolicy.com and pushes back against the prevailing “Washington narrative” that President Trump acted precipitously and dangerously when he announced the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria. This narrative (as told by the Blob, which is a symbol for the Mainstream Media when it cross breeds with the Swamp Critters) was first put in motion by the resignation/firing of Secretary of Defense Mattis and the subsequent resignation of Brett McGurk, the special presidential envoy for the anti-Islamic State coalition.

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Perry is an author who is well positioned to parse the narrative and try to locate the truth hidden therein. His most recent book is “The Pentagon’s Wars: The Military’s Undeclared War Against America’s Presidents,” which provides the best possible starting point for this discussion.

What Perry has learned is that the State Department and Pentagon have been studying the withdrawal since early 2018.

“This wasn’t a surprise,” a senior State Department official who works on Middle East issues told me last week. “We’ve been talking about getting our troops out of Syria since at least last March.”

Perry walks us through the process including the shift in language that began calling for the achievable goal of accomplishing the “enduring defeat” of ISIS, but not the pipe dreams of wiping out the ideology that spawned the terrorist army or the lingering hope that the al-Assad regime would fail.

“From 2011 and for the seven years that followed, the experts have been telling us that Assad’s days were numbered, that he was finished, even when it became obvious that wasn’t going to happen; it was a fairytale,” Middle East analyst Geoffrey Aronson said. “The result is that we were reduced to playing the role of spoiler. Listen, there are lots of reasons to not like Trump, but this was the right policy move to make. Our agreement with the Kurds was always temporary, and they knew it. So now they will do what they’ve been quietly talking about for the last two years: They’ll seek an accommodation with Damascus.”

There is much more to digest in Perry’s cogent and timely analysis, but what it comes down to is that there is much more to the truth than what you hear from those who oppose Trump on principle (i.e., the principle that opposing Trump is always right). I’ll let Perry have the final word since it is such a powerful conclusion.

There’s no question that Trump’s withdrawal decision has roiled official Washington, spurring the resignations of Mattis and McGurk, but the end-of-the-world scenario painted by Trump’s chorus of critics—that the Mattis resignation would be followed by many others, for example—has not happened. The reason might well be that there are many more officials in the foreign-policy establishment who agree with what Trump has done—and that, perhaps, the job of “restraining some of Trump’s worst instincts” shouldn’t be left in the hands of America’s generals.

Frank Miele writes from Kalispell, Montana, at www.HeartlandDiaryUSA.com and is a columnist at Real Clear Politics. To read more of my columns about the Dishonest Media, the Deep Swamp, the failed presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and Trump’s war to restore American greatness, read my “Why We Needed Trump” trilogy. Part 1 is subtitled “Bush’s Global Failure: Half Right.” Part 2 is “Obama’s Fundamental Transformation: Far Left.” Part 3 is “Trump’s American Vision: Just Right.” They are available at Amazon in paperback or Kindle editions. Also please considering leaving a review in support of my conservative commentary on one or all of my book pages at Amazon! Thanks!