Lucian K. Truscott IV is a standard-issue liberal with a history of rebellion against authority. He was one of the cadets at West Point who challenged mandatory attendance at chapel, eventually leading to the court-ordered end of that practice.
Truscott is best known as a novelist (“Dress Grey”) but he has also written non-fiction for five decades. In a new piece for Salon.com, Truscott becomes the poster boy for conflicted liberals who agree with Trump’s policies but nonetheless hate him with passionate intensity.
The title of the piece at Salon is “God help us, Trump is right about something.” The particular thing Truscott acknowledges Trump is right about is withdrawal from Afghanistan and Syria, but if liberal Democrats we’re capable of being honest, they would admit that headline applies to multiple Trump policies, whether on the economy, the intelligence agencies, the border and much more. It is no accident that it’s so easy to find quotes from a Democratic leaders supporting a border wall pre-Trump but not after Trump. They simply refuse en masse to give President Trump credit because they hate him at a visceral, instinctive level the way hyenas hate lions.
Truscott, however, using his own journalistic and military background, makes a compelling case why Trump is right about Syria and Afghanistan. he doesn’t like it, but he does it.
Here’s the problem the foreign policy establishment finds itself in: Trump may not be “coherent,” but he is right. We never should have invaded Iraq in the first place. We should have removed ourselves from Afghanistan the week after we removed al-Qaeda and the Taliban government from that country. We wouldn’t find ourselves in Syria “in overall control, perhaps indefinitely, of an area comprising nearly a third of Syria, a vast expanse of mostly desert terrain roughly the size of Louisiana,” according to the Washington Post. This, with a force of only 2,000 lightly armed soldiers supported by airpower and our Kurdish allies.
As for Afghanistan, what more need be said than 17 years? That’s how long we’ve been mucking about, killing Afghans and losing American lives over there.
Yep, Truscott knows that the establishment media elite, the four-star generals, and the rest of the Deep State crowd are wrong, but just in case you mistook him for a Trump supporter, he burnishes his mad lib credentials by throwing out a personal insult at President Trump just before admitting “he’s right.”
Donald Trump may be an orange-faced buffoon with a blonde muskrat on his head, but when it comes to our foreign and military policies in Afghanistan and Syria, he’s right, and the defense intellectuals and “experts” like Max Boot and Robert Kaplan are wrong. Pompeo’s and Bolton’s magical mystery tour is futile. Everyone over there knows we’ve lost but us. The only thing left to do is tuck our tails between our legs and go home.
Democrats and other progressives had better get used to tucking their own tails between their legs. Repeat after me: “God help us, Trump is right” — and not just about “something,” but about almost everything. That’s your new reality.
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!
