During the Republican primaries Donald Trump was almost alone in resisting the call for U.S. military intervention in Syria. While some of his competitors advocated shooting down Russian planes, Trump pledged to focus on ISIS. Yet he recently promised to “absolutely do safe zones in Syria,” which would put American forces in the middle of Syria’s civil war—apparently fighting on behalf of people he won’t allow to enter the U.S.
The Obama administration’s Syria policy was a failure, but of intervention, not isolation. For instance, Washington unintentionally fueled the conflict by calling for Assad’s ouster and offering the hope of Western support after protests erupted in 2011. Both sides saw less reason to negotiate.
Restless hawks on both right and left called for U.S. military action. They presumed that a few bombs on the right targets would wipe away the Assad regime, enabling pro-Western forces to establish a tolerant democracy, strengthening American influence, safeguarding Israeli security, and undercutting Iran’s Islamist regime.



It was a beautiful vision, but there was no reason to believe their claim that this time they would finally get foreign social engineering right. In Iraq America went in heavy, defenestrated the secular dictator, occupied the country, and created a new democratic government. In Libya Washington went in light, degraded the dictator’s armed forces, and left governance to the victorious rebels. In Yemen the U.S. partnered with an ally, Saudi Arabia, strengthening its campaign against the coalition of forces which ousted Riyadh’s pliant president.
In none of these cases was the result as promised. Yet war advocates simply dismiss their awful record. UN Ambassador Samantha Power insisted that “There is too much of, ‘Oh, look, this is what intervention wrought’.” She demanded to plunge ahead and start bombing in Syria, never mind the consequences. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof admitted that “We can’t be sure that more robust strategies” would actually succeed, but argued that something had to be done nonetheless.