There are many disturbing stories of foreign policy malpractice in John Bolton’s tell-all book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” but it’s clear that what the former national security adviser reveals about the Trump administration’s actions regarding Syria stand out as the most grossly negligent, horribly dysfunctional and morally bankrupt.
We already knew the basic Trump story on Syria. We knew that President Trump, who publicly called Syria nothing but “sand and death,” wanted to remove the roughly 2,000 U.S. troops in the country from day one, damn the consequences. We knew he wanted to declare victory over the Islamic State (prematurely), hand over the battlespace to anyone who would step in and declare a campaign promise fulfilled.
The book now provides not only gruesome details of how Trump misunderstood and mismanaged the United States’ Syria policy, but also the deep dysfunction inside his team. Most troubling is what Bolton’s book does not include — namely any honest attempt by the Trump administration to actually solve the Syrian crisis or protect Syrian civilians.
