RUTHFULLY YOURS

Washington is awash with dire predictions following President Trump’s “surprise” announcement late Sunday night to pull out the remaining 500 or so U.S. advisors currently in northern Syria.

But as the President tweeted on Monday morning, he was elected to end our “ridiculous endless wars,” which are costing us huge amounts in blood and treasure. Continued U.S. entanglement, according to Trump, can only make Russia and China happy.

So which is it: is the President endangering the United States and our allies by pulling out of Syria? Betraying our allies, the Kurds? Or is he defending America’s national interest?

I have spent a lot of time with the Kurds on the ground, especially in northern Iraq, along the Iranian border. I have also met with Kurdish peshmerga generals in Iraq, as well as the overall Iraqi commander, in charge of the fight against ISIS in Mosul.

That battle is over. And contrary to how MSNBC has been misquoting Sen. Lindsay Graham all day, the United States has indeed utterly defeated the ISIS caliphate.

Graham never said Trump lied about that; he said the administration is lying about defeating ISIS. But he’s wrong. The President acknowledges that ISIS continues to have a presence in the Middle East, and they or their jihadist cousins of one flavor or another will continue to have a presence in the region and in Europe until Muslim leaders rise up and defeat political Islam once and for all.

I suspect that I will see my risen Lord in the Rapture before that happens. I’ll explain why I am confident of that below.

President Trump believes that agents of the Deep State continue to prowl the basements of Washington, DC. His latest evidence of this, of course, is the so-called “whistleblowers” who reported his conversation with Ukrainian president Zelensky.

He looks at the administration of George W. Bush and the war with Iraq, and sees the hand of deep state agents there as well. And guess what? He’s right. I wrote a book about that in 2007. It’s called Shadow Warriors, and it details how a cabal of Bush-hating, pro-Democrat State Department weenies and intelligence community weasels conspired to feed false intelligence on Iraqi WMD to the Bush White House, and then blasted Bush 43 for waging a “war for oil.”

Pretty disgraceful.

The President also argues that the Middle East wars the deep state wants us to fight are primarily tribal in nature. He’s right there as well, up to a point.

Turkey will continue to whack the Kurds for as long as one Kurd remains breathing who demands his freedom and ethnic identity.

The Iranians will continue to wage war against the Saudis until they have toppled the Saudi monarchy, a prospect that is becoming increasingly likely.

Are these battles involving the U.S. national interest?

Again, you can argue both sides. But sending American soldiers to defend the Saudi royal family against its own people, even if they are fully supported by Iran, is not just a losing political proposition, it would be immoral and a betrayal of American military families.

I am convinced this president is not going to do that.

The Iranians are doing their best to provoke a full-fledged war with Saudi Arabia, which they believe they can win. They see it as a repeat of the sucker-punch they delivered to Saddam Hussein in September 1980—except that unlike Saddam, who nearly toppled the Khomeinist regime when he invaded Iran, the Saudis can’t win and they know it.

This explains why President Trump did not respond militarily when the Iranian Revolutionary Guards shot down a U.S. drone a few weeks ago, or launched drones and cruise missiles against the massive Saudi petroleum facility at Ab Qaiq.

These Iranian probes are a trap. My sources in Tehran tell me that the Iranians are hoping to ensnare the President in a war that will be unpopular and ultimately lead to his defeat in 2020.

They have turned to this strategy because U.S. sanctions are hurting the Iranian economy, and continue to pit the Iranian people against the regime.

But there is a big picture the president is not paying attention to, and that is the Russian-Iranian-Turkish military alliance, an alliance that Ezekiel 38-39 tells us will be turned against Israel.

Two years ago, the Iranians opened a land bridge at Abu Kamal on the Iraqi-Syrian border, and sent one of their top Iraqi terrorists with a convoy of military goods to meet up with Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon overlooking the Israeli border.

The idea was for Iran to be able to flow massive numbers of troops and military gear through Iraq into Syria and Lebanon for an eventual attack on Syria. That land bridge is now operational.

We learned just a week ago that Russia is now using the Abu Kamal border crossing to bring down fresh troops and military gear from its Black Sea bases and the Caucuses to the Syrian battlefront along Israel’s borders.

If you remember your Bible prophecy, Jesus will rapture the Church just before the Battle of Armageddon begins that pits the Russia-Iran-Turkey alliance against Israel.

I don’t believe the president is thinking in these terms, but rather doing what he does best: using threats and indirect pressure to weaken his adversaries before he gets them into face to face negotiations.

Trump is serious when he says he wants to negotiate with Iran’s leaders. That they will never sit down with Trump is another matter.  But in the World According to Trump, America wins when we have a powerful military, sitting at home, rested and well-armed, ready to fight if we ever face a serious national security challenge.

Think of this: today, the U.S. Navy is defending our interests overseas with just two aircraft carrier groups: the USS Abraham Lincoln, which is prowling the seas off Oman and Iran, and the USS Ronald Reagan, patrolling the South China Sea. The five other active-duty carriers are currently sitting in their home ports so their crews can prepare for future operations. Another four are in dry dock getting refurbished, and two more are under construction.

I don’t know of any other period in recent history when our military has done so much to defend our national interests with so few forces deployed around the world. And that is the world according to Trump.