Donald J. Trump’s December 2018 tweet withdrawing 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria—without congressional approval—ignited debate over America’s global policing role, with critics citing ISIS’s lingering threat despite its territorial losses and questioning whether the mission was ever legally or strategically justified. Obama’s Arab Spring interventions toppled Gaddafi (Libya) and Mubarak (Egypt), fueling extremist power vacuums, while Clinton’s no-fly zone proposals and alleged Russia collusion (including Obama’s "hot mic" concessions to Putin) exposed ideological overreach. Veteran Brian Colfage’s $6M GoFundMe for the border wall underscored shifting priorities from foreign wars to domestic defense, yet Trump’s 47% approval—despite media hostility—contrasts with Trudeau’s 35%, whose Canada abandoned key NATO training like Maple Flag while facing Quebec’s political upheaval. The episode frames U.S. midterms as a test of Trump’s base against Democratic "globalists," warning that Texas’s near-loss signals broader GOP risks tied to immigration and cultural backlash. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, Donald Trump ends the Syrian war with a tweet, and the establishment is sad.
But should America be the world's policeman?
It's December 20th, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
You come here once a year with a sign, and you feel morally superior.
The only thing I have to say to the government of why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Donald Trump announced that he's bringing home 2,000 American troops that are in Syria.
He just said it.
We're done.
He tweeted it.
And then he did a short video tweet, and it just became.
He said, we have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump presidency.
That's it.
I think both ideas in that short tweet are true.
I think ISIS has been defeated as much as can be done for an amorphous group that doesn't have a formal structure, doesn't have a formal geography, doesn't wear uniforms or bear their weapons openly.
The geographical form of the Islamic State used to be, well, it used to look like a real country.
It was as big as the United Kingdom, with millions of people in it, actually, especially in the captive city of Mosul.
But that's done now.
It's over.
The ISIS capital of Raqqa was absolutely obliterated.
It's like something out of Dresden, Germany, just firebombed by the Allies.
There's nothing left there.
500 U.S. special forces, lots of Allied air power, and some local Syrian and Kurdish militias didn't just conquer it.
They flattened it.
You saw the video there.
So Trump just announced it in a tweet.
And that is not normally how the U.S. Constitution imagined policy on matters as grave as wars to be set, but neither did the U.S. Constitution imagine America getting into the conflict in the manner it did so casually.
By contrast, three days after 9-11, the U.S. Congress debated and passed into law something similar to a declaration of war.
It was called the Authorization for Use of Military Force.
It's a very short law.
Let me read to you the operative sentence.
It's really a one-sentence law.
This is pretty much it.
That the president is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations, and persons.
That's it.
So basically, go and get anyone who attacked America on 9-11 or helped them.
Go get them to make sure they don't do it again.
Passed by Congress, approved by the president, and so it happened.
By contrast, there was no authorization of military force to do what exactly in Syria.
That one sentence law I read to you had everything in it, didn't it?
So what exactly was America doing in Syria?
Exactly, like precisely.
Fighting ISIS.
Okay, I get that.
They're the worst of the worst.
But the Syrians didn't invite America in.
Neither did the United Nations.
It was sort of the opposite.
Barack Obama wanted to keep his disastrous Arab Spring going.
A wave of Islamist uprisings across the Arab world that toppled stable regimes.
I didn't much like Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, seen here with Paul Martin.
I didn't much like Hosni Mubarak.
Yeah, look at that, Paul Martin and Gaddafi.
I didn't much like Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, seen here with John Kruchen.
They're dictators.
But they were stable and they actually fought against the Muslim Brotherhood or al-Qaeda.
But Obama threw both of them out and ISIS took over Libya and the Muslim Brotherhood took over Egypt.
And Obama had similar plans for Syria too.
And frankly, so did many Republicans like John McCain.
Seen here with rebels.
That's a nice way of saying it.
Rebels.
Who McCain really would have invaded half the world's countries if he had his way, I think.
Now, I read to you what America was doing after 9-11.
And some would say that even going after Iraq, which was also a fairly modern, fairly secular dictatorship, was not rationally connected to 9-11.
But at least there was an explanation, an undergirding law, however flawed its execution was.
What was the American purpose in Syria?
I read free the law to go to war against al-Qaeda.
Go after the folks who attacked us, make sure they don't happen again.
All right.
What was the purpose in Syria?
Trump says it was to stop the ISIS side of the civil war.
All right.
Check.
Or was it to topple Bashar Assad and effect some sort of regime change?
Or is it to get rid of both?
All right, and then replace them with whom?
I mean, really, it sounds like they wanted to replace every single faction and person in the country to save the country from itself.
That's the point about those parts of the world.
There aren't a lot of George Washingtons or John A. McDonald's waiting around to be great democratic leaders.
If there are any people like that, they're usually killed pretty quickly or driven into exile.
It's usually a choice amongst awful alternatives in these countries.
Do you think the natural nature of Afghanistan is one of a liberal democracy, civil rights, things like that?
It took us in the West centuries, you could even say millennia, to truly master liberal democracy.
And we still get it wrong, as the 20th century in Europe shows us.
But that's after building on thousands of years since the Roman Empire with its rule of law, since the Greeks before that.
It's been 800 years since the Magna Carta in the UK.
Do you think Afghans are suddenly going to build an entire cultural history with their own Shakespeare's and Adam Smiths and John Stuart Mills and just suddenly become liberal Democrats like us?
What were we doing there?
I think it's fair to say in Syria, Russia did the heavy lifting against ISIS, at least at first, at least until Trump came along.
Russia has a naval port in Syria.
That's no small thing.
And a major airbase also, from which they staged operations against ISIS.
And to be sure, against other rebels against Assad, Assad was Russia's ally, their colony, really.
And Iran sent in their ground troops too, which is even more worrying.
But at least the Russians attacked ISIS too, like the oil caravans.
Basically just oil trucks that would smuggle oil from ISIS oil fields up to Turkey that ISIS would sell on the black market for millions of dollars to pay for their terrorist country.
Russia took out those oil convoys.
She took them out.
Obama could, of course, but he chose not to.
And I know this is hard to believe.
I show this clip every time I mention it.
Obama did not attack these ISIS oil tankers for environmental reasons.
Here's a former senior Obama official admitting that bizarre fact.
We don't want to destroy these oil tankers because that's infrastructure that's going to be necessary to support the people when ISIS isn't there anymore.
And it's going to create environmental damage.
I thought the I in CIA stood for intelligence.
Imagine, yeah, we had them in our sights, but you know, it would have been so much soot.
I mean, the carbon emissions of blowing up that ISIS oil.
We just couldn't do it.
That's Barack Obama for you.
What exactly were the Americans doing there?
I think there was some hope for some mythical liberal or moderate militia in Syria who was going to take over.
Talk about a fool's errand.
Here, I want to show you a real clip.
There's one more clip.
And again, you've got to see this to believe this.
This is a congressional hearing in Washington, D.C. with a senior general who is in charge under Obama of the Syrian efforts.
Now, Congress had spent a half a billion dollars trying to recruit and train this elusive, moderate militia in the vain hope that what?
That they would take over the country from Assad, that they would govern all of Syria, that they would just be a U.S. puppet and follow orders.
I'm not exactly sure, but after a half of a billion dollars, this general was asked, so how's it going?
How many guys do you have in this pro-American militia?
And you just got to hear the answer for yourself.
Take a listen.
A shocking admission by the U.S. general running the war against ISIS.
How few U.S.-trained Syrian rebels are left.
It's a small number.
And the ones that are in the fight is, we're talking four or five.
As I see it right now, this four or five U.S.-trained fighters, let's not kid ourselves, that's a joke.
Four or five.
So you could name them.
We got Mohammed and Mohammed and Asif and Shabazz or whatever.
I mean, you don't even have to call it.
You can say the guys.
You can say the fellas.
Half a billion dollars.
I heard of the $6 million man.
That was $100 million man.
Can you believe that?
Yeah, I agree with that senator or congressman.
That's a little crazy.
So what was America doing there?
Nothing or maybe something.
I don't know.
Hillary Clinton had proposed literally shooting down any airplane in the skies over Syria, whether it was Syrian or Russian.
ISIS, of course, didn't have an air force.
Do you remember this?
I want to play you a clip.
It's a couple minutes long from the 2016 presidential debates.
Listen to all three presidential debaters.
I said three.
Here's a two-minute clip from two years ago.
Take a look.
Every day that goes by, we see the results of the regime by Assad in partnership with the Iranians on the ground, the Russians in the air.
Russia hasn't paid any attention to ISIS.
They're interested in keeping Assad in power.
So I, when I was Secretary of State, advocated, and I advocate today, a no-fly zone and safe zones.
We need some leverage with the Russians because they're not going to come to the negotiating table for a diplomatic resolution unless there is some leverage over them.
Russia has decided that it's all in in Syria.
And they've also decided who they want to see become president of the United States, too, and it's not me.
She talks tough against Russia.
But our nuclear program has fallen way behind, and they've gone wild with their nuclear program.
Not good.
Our government shouldn't have allowed that to happen.
Russia is new in terms of nuclear.
We are old.
We're tired.
We're exhausted in terms of nuclear.
A very bad thing.
Now, she talks tough.
She talks really tough against Putin and against Assad.
She wants to fight for rebels.
There's only one problem.
You don't even know who the rebels are.
Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump, you're too innocent.
What do you have to say?
You're too innocent.
I don't like Assad at all.
But Assad is killing ISIS.
Russia is killing ISIS.
Mr. Trump, let me repeat the question.
If you were president, what would you do about Syria and the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo?
And I want to remind you what your running mate said.
He said provocations by Russia need to be met with American strength and that if Russia continues to be involved in airstrikes along with the Syrian government forces of Assad, the United States of America should be prepared to use military force to strike the military targets of the Assad regime.
He and I haven't spoken and I disagree.
I disagree with that.
You disagree with your running mate.
Look, I said all three debaters because it's a reminder of how extremely partisan the media moderators were in that campaign.
And believe me, that wasn't the worst of it there.
But Hillary Clinton.
I mean, here's Bill Clinton yucking it up with Vladimir Putin.
I think this was a picture in St. Petersburg.
Look at them.
Oh, France.
While Hillary Clinton was the Secretary of State, Bill Clinton was paid half a million dollars to give a speech.
So she was Secretary of State.
He was picking up half a million dollar checks.
Oh, and it's a New York Times article here, by the way.
Millions more went to the Clinton Foundation from Russian interests.
Oh, and purely a coincidence, Hillary Clinton approved the sale of American uranium interests to Russians.
So on the one hand, it's a laugh to think that Hillary Clinton wasn't bought and paid for by the Russians and the Saudis.
I mean, remember Barack Obama, remember when he had that meeting with Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian, when he had a hot mic on?
I just have to get through my re-election 2012 and then tell Vladimir Putin I'll make more concessions.
Remember that hot mic incident?
This is my last election, please.
The 10 second clip is more proof of collusion than anything that Robert Mueller has come up with in two years.
Yeah, don't tell me the Democrats were hard on Russia.
But if we could take Hillary Clinton at her word about the no-fly zone, you really didn't enforce a no-fly zone over another sovereign country that has not invited you in.
What would that mean?
It's not just a naval base.
The Russians have a major Air Force base in Syria.
She would literally order U.S. jets to shoot down Russian jets, modern fifth-generation Russian jets, taking off and landing from the Russian airbase there, really?
And for what purpose?
Hillary Clinton is a sociopath who delighted in the assassination of Muammar Gaddafi, but seemed to have forgotten to plan who would replace him.
End Of Terrible Moments00:05:00
We came, we saw, he died.
Did it have anything to do with your visit?
No, I'm sure it did.
Boy, she loved that laugh.
She loved that little joke.
Yeah, we killed him.
We totally killed him.
He died after we killed him.
Yeah, don't tell me that Trump is the madman, okay?
So that 2016 clip, the media as a partisan, those were awful debates, weren't they?
Hillary Clinton as A, a liar, and B, an insane warmonger.
And then C, Donald Trump saying kill ISIS and get out.
That's what he said he was going to do.
Kill ISIS and get out.
And guess what he did?
He just did.
And he did it by tweet.
And then he followed up with some more tweets, including this interesting video that was roundly mocked online and by the pundits.
But I found it actually compelling.
What do you think?
We've been fighting for a long time in Syria.
I've been president for almost two years and we've really stepped it up and we have won against ISIS.
We've beaten them and we've beaten them badly.
We've taken back the land and now it's time for our troops to come back home.
I get very saddened when I have to write letters or call parents or wives or husbands of soldiers who have been killed fighting for our country.
It's a great honor.
We cherish them.
But it's heartbreaking.
There's no question about it.
It's heartbreaking.
Now we've won.
It's time to come back.
They're getting ready.
You're going to see them soon.
These are great American heroes.
These are great heroes of the world because they fought for us, but they've killed ISIS who hurts the world.
And we're proud to have done it.
And I'll tell you, they're up there looking down on us.
And there is nobody happier or more proud of their families to put them in a position where they've done such good for so many people.
So our boys, our young women, our men, they're all coming back.
And they're coming back now.
We won.
And that's the way we want it.
And that's the way they want it.
I think he's right.
We'll run that by a military vet from the U.S. Foreign War in the Americas.
So we'll get an American point of view on that video.
Can I show you just one more video?
Before I show it to you, let me ask you a question about this next video.
I'm going to show you a video.
It's got a ton of circulation on social media.
Wouldn't surprise me if you've seen it.
I have a question for you.
Is this a heartwarming video that makes you feel good?
Or is this a heartbreaking video that makes you feel bad?
Is this a two-minute happy scene?
Or is it just the last two minutes of six months or nine months or 12 months of sorrow and loss and alienation and worry and stress and sadness?
When you take your hand off a hot stove, is that a wonderful moment at the end or is it the end of a terrible moment?
Well, you tell me.
Look at this video.
That's a big gift.
You better open it.
Open it.
The rocks are running.
What do you think it is?
I don't know.
I don't even have an idea yet.
I think you're gonna like it.
Big box.
What is it?
Do you have room for this?
Big box.
Oh, my God.
Look at that.
What's in there? What is it? What is it?
What is it?
Oh, my God.
Oh, baby.
Don't cry.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
That is not a happy moment.
That is the end of a lot of terrible moments.
And for what?
End Of Terrible Moments00:03:23
Let us grant that it made sense to go in there and smash ISIS.
Let's accept that.
But what's the point now?
And don't tell me Obama sent those troops in there in the first place to tackle Iran, which is an argument I hear.
Obama was the president who approved Iran's nuclear program, gave them more than $150 billion in payments.
And this video here is actual footage of more than a billion dollars in cold, hard cash put on pallets and flown to Iran by Obama.
So yeah, no, I don't believe that 2,000 Americans in Syria is about containing Iran.
Look, the world is a difficult place, and these intrigues, what do they have to do with America's interests or Canada's interests?
And you'll forgive me if I note that the same politicians seem to switch sides with the winds.
A few years ago, it was respectable to hang out with Bashar Assad, just like I showed you pictures of Mubarak and Gaddafi.
Here's Barack Obama's Secretary of State on the left, John Kerry.
That was back in 2009 when he was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, having a fine meal with Bashar Assad, the dictator of Syria, son of Hafez Assad, the previous dictator of Syria.
And as you can see, it wasn't all business.
As you can see, they were dressed for a fine night out.
They were at a fancy Damascus restaurant.
And as you can see, their wives were with them.
The Son of Business meeting, that's friends.
That's Kerry and Assad.
And they met at least six times that we know about.
In March of 2011, Vogue magazine, which was edited by Anna Wintour, an ally of Obama, Vogue, a glamour magazine, published this glowing, sexy, soft-focus interview with the Assads, focusing on Assad's wife, Asma.
Now, they've taken it down since, but Gawker magazine pirated it and put it back up on the internet for the historical record.
Take a look.
Just scroll down.
Just scroll down.
Asma el-Assad, a rose in the desert.
That's the term of endearment I save for only my close friends like David Menzies.
Just scroll down through this.
This is not journalism, and it's not quite fashion.
This is about making the Assads polite company in fancy circles in America.
The headline was, a rose in the desert.
They called Asma the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies.
Now it must be said she is glamorous.
She's not Melania Trump level glamorous, but just for comparison in the neighborhood, here's the wife of Richep Erdogan, the authoritarian ruler of Turkey, just for contrast.
And here's the ruler of Pakistan with his lovely new bride.
At least I think that's who's under there.
Not sure.
So by contrast, yes, Asma was fresh and magnetic.
And although Bashar Assad is a tyrant, we must say, he is by any measure less cruel than the ISIS terrorists who devoured so much of his country, and Iraq too, to set up their theocracy.
Under Assad, Christians were permitted to practice their religion.
Assad, as you can see by how he dresses, and obviously by how his wife dresses, sees himself as a modern secular man.
In fact, Assad is Muslim, but part of a small sect called Alawites, who follow the Quran, but other books too.
And in fact, ISIS wouldn't even regard them as true Muslims.
And they have more liberal interpretations.
For example, Alawites are allowed to drink alcohol, for example.
Here's a picture of Assad as a young man.
Anti-Trump Sentiments00:15:40
That's him standing second from the left with his family.
I'm glad I'm not from that part of the world, but if I was, I'd probably rather be ruled by this clan, the Alawites, than by most other tyrants in the region.
I think how they treat women is shorthand for a lot of things, don't you?
How a woman is treated in a culture tells you a lot about how everyone's treated.
Do you think the liberal media establishment would like Trump pulling the soldiers out of Syria.
Trump is done with a war.
All the anti-war protesters, they're on the left.
And instead of cheering this, they hate the fact that Trump is declaring victory.
They prefer smearing the military and veterans.
They loved how they denormalized the military after Vietnam.
They hate that part, but aren't they normally just for peace?
Even if they hate soldiers, don't they want to bring them back?
Bring the troops home?
You know, you have that lie of the left.
I love the troops, I just hate the war.
They actually hate both, but isn't bringing the troops home what they want?
And don't they especially hate the war on terror?
And don't they especially hate the war on terror against Muslim terrorists?
And don't they hate American imperialism?
Didn't the CBC here in Canada cheer, for example, when Justin Trudeau removed our six CF-18 fighter jets from the fight against ISIS when ISIS was strong?
And when it had that UK-sized piece of real estate, and when it was killing and raping Yazidis and Christians by the thousand.
Trudeau abandoned combat against ISIS while it was in the middle, while ISIS was still powerful.
He quit and ran away, and the CBC loved him for it.
When I was in Iraq last year, I met a Kurdish general who helped beat back ISIS, and he told me that he was very well aware that Canada quit the fight right before the final battle.
And he suggested that perhaps some of the men he commanded would still be alive now had they been able to benefit from Canadian jets coming in from the sky to take out clusters of terrorists.
But the CBC knew better.
It was wise for Trudeau to pull out.
So what does the CBC say about Donald Trump bringing the troops home?
They loved it when Trudeau did so before the final battle.
Well, here's what CBC's flagship show called The National had to say.
Analysts fear the vacuum left behind.
President Trump is running his Syria policy as if it's a reality TV show.
Well, it's very deep, isn't it?
Did you learn anything from that?
Or was that just another anti-Trump insult spoken by some leftists in a think tank?
I Googled that guy, and he's with a think tank in Washington called the Center for a New American Security.
Here's their list of donors.
Let's just start from the top, okay?
The biggest donors on down.
You've got the Heinz Foundation.
That's John Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz.
Then you've got Northrop Grumman.
Do you see that?
You know they make weapons, right?
Including, they made the F-14 Tomcat fighter jet, for example.
You've got the Open Society Foundations.
Do you see that there?
That's George Soros.
That's George Soros' lobby group.
If you skim through this, there's a lot of arms dealers on the list, people who believe fighting perpetual war is for perpetual peace, or as George Soros might say, invade the world's countries, welcome the world's refugees.
The welfare warfare state.
Look, if this were about defending a real democracy against tyrannical invaders, it would be something the West should consider, absolutely.
And by the West, I mean America, because Trudeau has cut our military so badly we can't even have our annual flight exercise at Cold Lake anymore.
But we're not defending any democracy in Syria with our, or America's 2000s.
I'll stop saying we, since Trudeau has pretty much abandoned any fight against terrorism.
Even here at home where he welcomes ISIS terrorists back to Canada, Trump obviously saw the entire foreign policy establishment raging at him, and I don't think he cares.
Today he tweeted some more.
He said, does the USA want to be the policeman of the Middle East, getting nothing but spending precious lives and trillions of dollars protecting others who, in almost all cases, do not appreciate what we are doing?
Do we want to be there forever?
Time for others to finally fight.
I think that's right.
Once upon a time, there was a rationale for America to fight Arabian wars.
Maybe to defend access to OPEC oil, if that's a reason.
But now America produces more oil than Saudi Arabia does, and Americans are tired of fighting and dying for countries that are ungrateful and, more to the point, don't have freedom and democracy in their national blood.
Time to bring the troops home.
There's a border in America for the troops to guard.
Trump is failing at that.
But actually, look at this.
Look at this.
Just three days ago, this U.S. military veteran, a triple amputee, as you can see, his name is Brian Colfage.
He said about GoFundMe page.
You know what that is?
Just a crowdfunding page to build the wall on the southern border.
It sounds insane.
I mean, that's a billion-dollar, multi-billion dollar project.
But he started it.
And look at this.
In just three days, as I say this, he's actually raised more than $6 million.
By the time this goes to air, I bet it'll be $8, $9, $10 million.
Now, he has a $1 billion goal.
This is crowdfunding.
People are voluntarily chipping in.
Now, it's insane.
Or is it a billion dollars?
That's a fraction of a sliver what America spends in places like Syria to protect, to protect who?
How about protecting America from its actual invaders?
I think that GoFundMe is great.
I think it's patriotic.
And I think its real purpose is not to pay for the wall.
I think it's an effort that will hopefully shame Donald Trump and the Congress into fulfilling Trump's biggest and most important promise of protecting the United States itself.
That is a mission anyone can understand and a mission that we here in Canada sorely need too.
Stay with us for more.
We've been fighting for a long time in Syria.
I've been president for almost two years and we've really stepped it up and we have won against ISIS.
We've beaten them and we've beaten them badly.
We've taken back the land and now it's time for our troops to come back home.
I get very saddened when I have to write letters or call parents or wives or husbands of soldiers who have been killed fighting for our country.
It's a great honor.
We cherish them.
But it's heartbreaking.
There's no question about it.
It's heartbreaking.
Now we've won.
It's time to come back.
They're getting ready.
You're going to see them soon.
These are great American heroes.
These are great heroes of the world because they fought for us, but they've killed ISIS who hurts the world.
And we're proud to have done it.
And I'll tell you, they're up there looking down on us.
And there is nobody happier or more proud of their families to put them in a position where they've done such good for so many people.
So our boys, our young women, our men, they're all coming back.
And they're coming back now.
We won.
And that's the way we want it.
And that's the way they want it.
Well, that's U.S. President Donald J. Trump announcing with some personal flourish that he is bringing home some 2,000 U.S. military personnel who are in Syria.
It's interesting that he references soldiers who were killed in Syria and speaks on their behalf.
That was pounced upon immediately by liberal critics who usually are anti-war, but I think are anti-anything Trump says.
So pulling troops home is something they suddenly don't agree with.
Now, neither I nor Donald Trump have served in the military.
He went to an academy as a youth, but he avoided service in a hot war.
And I think this is the sort of subject that we must defer in some regard to those who have actually risked their lives and served and sacrificed.
I'm not saying that only people who served can speak about these matters, but I think on touchy subjects, I think we should listen to them first.
And so it is with pleasure, and it's an honor also, that I bring to you one of our rebel talents.
I'm talking about Kurt Schlichter.
He's the host of Take That, twice a week on the Rebel.
But did you know he is also a military veteran?
And he joins us now via Skype.
Kurt, great to see you again.
Thanks for joining us today.
Well, thanks for having me, Ezra.
And I appreciate what you said because you pointed out that we all have a say in this.
Yeah, I was in the military.
You can assess my experience.
I was in Desert Storm.
I was not in Iraq round two or Afghanistan.
I did go to the Army War College.
I did command a battalion.
But, you know, everybody's got a right to give their view.
And all the views are important.
Some of us may know some technical stuff that others don't.
And I think what that leads me to is what Donald Trump did.
And again, I'm of two minds on this.
I could be convinced either way.
I think the people who are anti-Trump, or in many cases, just anti-Trump, they don't have a coherent reason for being against what he says, or it goes against what they believe right up to the point where he was inaugurated.
But I also understand that there are some risks with pulling out.
I'm particularly concerned about our Kurdish allies.
Are they going to be safe?
What are we going to do?
What does pulling out actually mean?
I think we have a lot of questions.
But, you know, Ezra, there's a lot of questions about the policy that we're on now, too.
And I can't seem to get an answer.
I'll go on Twitter and I'll say, okay, how many lives are you willing to spend to restore something like order?
Because you're not going to restore democracy.
And anyone who says you are, I'm done with you.
You're not going to, to restore order to Syria.
How many lives?
What is the number?
And, you know, all I get is you're Putin's puppet.
You're stupid.
You're a Trump blankety blank.
And, you know, as a lawyer, because I'm also a lawyer, when somebody doesn't give me a straight answer, Ezra, I assume that they're trying to pull something on me.
I assume they don't have a good answer or their answer hurts them.
And I'd like answers.
I'd like to know how many lives does whatever your objective in Syria justify?
How much money does it justify?
And what are those objectives?
And I can't seem to get a good answer on this.
Kurt, you mentioned what our objectives would be.
And I'm saying our.
Of course, Canada abandoned this fight soon after Justin Trudeau took over.
He withdrew our six CF-18 jets and support.
So when I say our, I'm saying the moral West, but of course it's America that's doing the heavy lifting.
Let me read Trump's very succinct tweet yesterday, very economical in its words.
He said, we have defeated ISIS in Syria.
My only reason for being there during the Trump presidency.
And what I like about that, Kurt, is he's saying my objective was to feat them.
I have defeating them.
I have defeated them.
So sticking around for collateral purposes to be a globo cop because there's some idealistic hope that we can find a George Washington of Syria, those aren't the goals.
I like the economy of thinking there.
And anyone who has a different goal should elaborate on it.
What is your goal now that ISIS is down to 1% of its original strength?
Well, exactly.
And look, in the Army War College, I'm a graduate.
We're taught, hey, when you don't have an objective, you have problems.
And of course, the United States promptly forgot about establishing objectives over the last 17 years.
Now, again, I'm not anti-war in Syria.
I don't think that it is inherently wrong for us to be in Syria.
That's not what I'm saying.
I'm saying, why are we there?
What are we willing to pay for?
How are we going to not be there?
Because it's important.
What do we intend to accomplish?
I can't get a good answer.
And again, I'm also not one of those people who is a knee-jerk anti-peacekeeping nation-building guy, because I was on a successful mission.
I was in Kosovo, and we succeeded in a peacekeeping, nation-building mission there.
So again, I'm not here advocating for anything except clarity.
And I'd like to see, I do like that the president's being clear.
That is leadership.
Now, you might not agree with where he's going, but he is taking a stand against the establishment, saying, I promised this.
I've been telling you I'm going to do this.
And now I'm going to do it.
So this should not come as a shock to anybody, although a lot of people are acting shocked.
Yeah.
You know, I just, in my monologue, played some old clips of Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, you know, toppling Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, letting the Muslim Brotherhood come in, toppling Muammar Gaddafi.
And I'm no fan of either man, but Gaddafi had given up his weapons of mass destruction, had paid more than a billion dollars in compensation to terrorism victims.
I've never heard of that happen in the history of the world.
He was trying to reconcile with the West, and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama toppled him, but they didn't answer the question, and then what?
And I think that's the big question throughout the Middle East.
Okay, so you topple Saddam and then what?
You topple Bashar Assad and then what?
And who is the good guy?
This is a battle of the least bad guys.
I mean, if the standard is, because the standard seems to be, well, ISIS can come back, because I think everybody's agreed that they've suffered major strategic and tactical defeats over there, that the area where their unchallenged power exists is very, very small, if it exists at all in Syria.
Do they have the potential to come back?
They certainly do.
We saw that in Iraq.
And Obama's actions in Iraq, which led to the rise of ISIS, are an important lesson that we shouldn't ignore no matter where you stand on the issue overall.
But the idea that there's a potential that a bunch of Islamic radicals are going to rise up again, well, that's an invitation to stay forever.
If that's your standard, if that's your standard, say that's your standard.
If your standard is, I think we just occupy the whole area.
Okay.
Now we can talk honestly.
But when you start saying, well, Putin's excited about this, Putin's got maybe 4,000 guys in there.
Maple Leaf's Dilemma00:07:30
That's a brigade.
What's the influence of a brigade?
Maybe like 20 square miles, 30 square miles of all of Syria?
Come on.
Come on.
That's just silly.
I think it was Gordon Cheng, who I generally respect.
I mean, I find Gordon Cheng very wise on the question of China.
And he's very skeptical of China, and he's a big booster of Trump's China policy.
So I know that Gordon Cheng is not an anti-Trumper.
And I know he's an American patriot.
His worry is this.
And help me out with this one, because it's the only criticism I've seen that is registering with me, partly because it's Gordon.
He says this may telegraph to other bad actors that maybe Donald Trump doesn't have the stomach for a lengthy and potentially bloody military project.
And he was worried that China might take some adventurous steps in the South China Sea or whatever, maybe even Taiwan.
He was worried that maybe Vladimir Putin would take advantage.
and go further into Ukraine.
So Gordon Cheng's worry was not precisely about Syria.
It was what other people might think about Trump's resolve.
Do you think there's any merit to that criticism?
Substantively, I don't think it reflects on Trump's resolve.
I think Trump actually would have a much easier time if he just let this go on.
But what matters is perception.
Could an enemy draw that perception from what's happening in Syria?
And I suppose they could, but I don't think, you know, the idea that we're wrapped up in Syria is probably, you know, probably pleases the Chinese.
The simple fact is we're focused on a low-level bandit hunt out in the Syrian desert when our real threat is a high-tempo conventional war against North Korea and China right now.
That is what we should be preparing for.
And a smaller extent, Russia.
I think Russia in a lot of ways is a paper tiger.
Paper tigers could still cut you.
But the simple fact is, are our enemies going to be really thrilled, unhappy that we're happy that we're pulling ourselves out of a quagmire?
And that goes for Afghanistan, too.
I don't know if quagmire is the right word, but an engagement that may or may not be giving us a huge strategic benefit.
Sorry, go ahead.
I think maybe I'm a little biased.
A friend of mine got shot in Afghanistan last month.
Guy I've known for years, guy who came up with me in the military, and some traitor shot him, almost killed him.
But he's a tough dude.
So this is personal.
And I'm wondering, is the life of my friend and the other comrades who I don't know worth it in Afghanistan anymore after all these years?
Is it worth it in Syria?
And I think those are important questions to ask.
You are not helping Putin because you ask those questions and you force people to take a position.
I would like the Congress to do its war-making job and either declare that we are at war against ISIS and we're going to stay in Syria until they are gone and pounded into rubble and people fear to whisper America's name, or we're going to pull out.
I want to see them take a stand.
Right now, it's only Donald Trump, and he gets all the heat, but he's willing to take it.
So what's the right answer?
I can't tell you.
I want to hear more, and we can certainly do it wrong.
If we betray our Kurdish friends, we're doing it wrong.
You know, you're so right.
Kurdistan is the closest thing we'll find to a liberal democracy in the region.
We had the interesting experience of visiting there and seeing some of the Christian refugees that were cleansed, so to speak, ethnically cleansed.
It's a terrible phrase, by the ISIS terrorists.
The new enemy, of course, for them is the Iranians.
But I was just remarking, I was just thinking as you were talking, that the Americans have been on the ground in Afghanistan for 17 years now.
That's clearly the longest war in American history, I think.
And, you know, is it unlimited?
It's not like having a military base in Germany that's just sort of a base.
This is active engagement.
This is stuff.
We are unwilling to do what it takes to turn the tide as a country.
It seems pretty clear.
We are not going to put in 100,000 more guys and tell them, you know, go get them.
We're just not going to do that.
Okay.
All right.
And there's nothing left.
So what are we going to do?
There's no good guys there.
Hey, can I end by asking you something about Canada?
And I know it's on the Air Force side, and that's a different side of things than you were on.
But I wonder if you have any thoughts on it.
You know, the red flag exercises in the United States developed in Vietnam.
There was a study that the vast majority of pilots' errors being shot down, et cetera, were in the first 10 missions.
So they set up red flag to basically do those 10 missions in exercises over America to send over, to work out the bugs.
It was such a success.
This was a top gun exercise.
It was top gun.
Great idea.
And in Canada, we started something called Maple Flag, you know, Maple being our Maple Leaf.
Right.
And for 40 years, we've been doing it.
And the only time it was interrupted in Canada was when we had major overseas deployments for action, including for Kosovo, by the way.
Just last week, Justin Trudeau announced that he is shutting down the Maple Flag exercise.
It's a two-week exercise every year at a major air base in my home province of Alberta.
And they're saying, well, we need to refocus and we need to manage resources and we need to innovate.
And that was something that wasn't just for Canadians.
NATO pilots, and even non-NATO Australians, New Zealanders, Israel even came once.
Singapore came.
Canada just shut down our version called Maple Flag.
And I wonder if America even knows if America, what does America think of Canada in terms of being a NATO ally anymore?
I just am so depressed about that because that was the best thing our Air Force did every year.
Well, look, I got to tell you, among American military, the Canadians' reputation is it couldn't be higher.
They've stood by us.
They are solid, squared away, brave, resourceful.
Yeah, they are, you know, they're under threat from a leader who frankly doesn't do what he needs to do as far as defending his country.
And I think it's a damn shame that they're not getting this vital experience.
I hope that they can make it up somehow.
Hopefully they can continue working with the United States and NATO forces.
But this is common in the West.
We've decided that, you know, as people, that, you know, we're not worth defending ourselves anymore.
Guys Will Die00:08:04
Yeah.
It made me terribly sad.
It's sad.
It is very sad.
Guys will die.
I think so.
Guys will die in combat because they don't have that vital training.
But, you know, Trudeau will be, you know, by then he'll be off partying with rock stars and dancing, and he doesn't care.
He doesn't care.
It's not important to him.
It doesn't matter to him.
And that's the sad thing.
His own military does not matter to him.
It is not a priority.
Yeah.
It is very sad.
That's just it.
Well, Kurt, listen, I appreciate you taking the time.
And, you know, I have to say, although I don't have skin in the game, the idea of bringing American men and women home and not putting them at risk and all the stresses to the families and the stresses to the communities, the cost is the least of it.
The financial cost is the least of it.
I think this is good news.
And let America go to war only when it is necessary and required and certain objectives and sharp, but not a 17-year or a 10-year open-ended mission.
I think this is a good news thing.
Last word to you, Kurt.
I think that once you leave Washington, D.C., you have a very different perspective.
Because it isn't the people in Washington, D.C. who send their sons and daughters over there to fight.
That is very good.
Those are the people who elected Donald Trump.
And Donald Trump was absolutely clear about what he intended to do.
You can't say he was hiding it.
And they voted for him.
That matters.
Yeah.
Well, Kurt, thank you so much.
It's always great to have you to talk with you on my show.
I enjoy your videos.
We call them Take That because you dish it out.
And you know what?
We admire you for a lot of reasons.
And the fact that you actually lived up to your ideals and served your country.
And of course you were doing it to defend the United States, but you were defending us too, even if it wasn't on the top of your mind.
And here at the Rebel, we're grateful to you.
Well, look, I was a colonel.
I didn't do anything.
It was the young guys who did everything.
And we're proud to serve side by side with the brave Canadian forces.
There's no one better.
And they could not have higher respect from Americans.
I salute them.
Merry Christmas to you and your country.
Thank you very much.
It's a beautiful way to end a Merry Christmas to you too.
Take care, my friend.
Thank you.
All right.
Well, there you have it, Kurt Slichter.
He's the host of Take That.
You got to watch.
He's got a great sense of humor, and he's a patriot all the way down.
He's just fighting.
He's still fighting.
Can you see it?
All right.
Stay with us.
More Head on the Rebel.
Hey, welcome back.
On my monologue yesterday about Trudeau dropping in the polls.
James writes, the 30% support for Trudeau is the liberal base.
Probably won't fall much below that.
My focus is on the 10% between 30% and 40%, because that is what will win the election.
James, I think that's pretty good reasoning on your part.
There are some die-hard lefties that will never move over, some die-hard conservatives that will move over.
That said, even saying these words in answer to you, I think, well, look what happened in Quebec.
A new party out of the blue, the Coalition Avenue Quebec, crushed the Liberals, put them to a historic low.
And in fact, if you look at all the upstart parties combined, it was more than the traditional parties.
There was the Quebec Solidaire Ultra-Left Party.
And Trudeau is clearly moving hard to the left, taking advantage of Jagmeet Singh's total weakness in the NDP.
I think I mentioned to him a couple months ago when there was a by-election in Leeds-Grenville, going from memory here, the New Democrat got 3% of the vote.
Now, the Conservatives won a majority there, but if your NDP nationwide is losing 10 points, that's probably going to go to your Liberals.
So where does the Conservative Party go?
Normally, it might ooze to the center.
And clearly, that's what Andrew Scheer was thinking, but here is Maxime Bernier.
And although he doesn't have the infrastructure, he has charisma, an online presence, and he is really leading a national discussion.
I really think it's clear that Andrew Scheer is copying Maxime Bernier on issues, whether it's immigration or just trying to copy his style.
That's my way of saying we could be in a disruption cycle, like they were in Quebec.
Remember, there's a new coalition party in New Brunswick, the People's Alliance, I think it's called.
We interviewed the leader of it.
Jason Kenney in Alberta is nominally a conservative, but again, they mashed up a couple of parties there.
I think you're right, but don't close your mind to the possibility that we could see a redrawing of the lines and the disruption federally.
Isn't that what we've seen throughout Europe?
Isn't that what we saw in Brexit?
Isn't that what we saw, in fact, in Donald Trump?
Robert Wright's Trump approval, 47%, Rasmussen.
Justin approval, 35%, Angus Reed.
Enough said.
You are so right.
And that is with 90% hostile press towards Trump and 90% dating game style Rosemary Barton love letter press for Trudeau.
There's quite something in that.
On my car ride interview with Joel Pollack, Paul writes, the GOP lost Congress because they failed to act on many issues.
Throwing out Trump over this will hand the country over to the Democrat globalists.
There will be plenty of blame to go around, but America will never come back from it.
Well, that's the thing.
I mean, I found the U.S. midterm elections very interesting, as I'm sure many of you did.
I accept the conventional wisdom that the battle over Brett Kavanaugh in the Supreme Court motivated Trump's people to fight and get out and vote because they saw good you're not willing to bend the knee to the political correctness.
So there was some good news there.
In fact, I think Trump grew in the Senate if my memory serves.
But I look at Texas.
In my mind, Texas is the most right-wing of places.
I know technically it's not.
Utah, West Virginia, places like that.
Wyoming are actually more right-wing, mathematically speaking.
But Texas is Texas, for God's sakes.
And a white Obama named Beethoven O'Rourke got 48% in Texas for the Democrats.
And of course he's running for president.
If the Democrats can come within a one and a half points of turning Texas blue.
By the way, if Texas goes Democrat, there is no math that ever gets you to a Republican majority.
Just the sheer size of Texas.
I think it's the second largest state by population now after California.
It's California, Texas and Florida, and it closed second and third.
It would be like if the Dems lost California to a Republican.
By the way, that did happen.
Reagan, Nixon, Nixon was governor.
California, if my memory serves, or was he senator?
Reagan was governor.
If California ever went Republican, Democrats would never win again.
If Texas goes Democrat, Republicans will never win again.
And it came within 1.5% of happening, 1.5% chance of happening.
That's why the wall is the liver-die issue for the Dems, because the wall keeps out their future voters.
If you look at the counties in Texas that went most pro-Democrat, it's the one the closest to the border.
That's what happens when you have 13 million illegals.
I can assure you, they vote 99% for Democrats.
That's exactly why Justin Trudeau is doing it up here, too.