Interesting take on the Mattis/Syria situation....
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Mattis was given six months to come up with an exit strategy. Mattis himself earlier in the administration had stated we did not intend to maintain a long term presence in Syria. He did not attempt to come up with an exit strategy during that six month period. So, him being shocked that the president would still order the US out of Syria should not have come as a surprise to him or anybody at the DOD.
Trump had been clear that the primary mission for the US was to destroy the caliphate and particularly remove ISIS from Raqqa its defacto capital. The reason ISIS was able to gain so much strength in the first place was due to the US government dumping 650 tons of weapons into the country when Obama supported regime change in Syria. Obama later waffled on that policy and abandoned it altogether late in his second term. Trump never had a policy of regime change in Syria.
For people claiming that we're turning Syria over to Russia and/or Iran they've been asleep for the past several decades. Syria has been a client-state of Russia since 1973 hence the existence of the Tarsus naval facility, which is Russia's only Mediterranean port. Iran has been active in Syria since the 1980s which is why Hezbollah has had bases there that it used to attack Lebanon, particularly back in the 1980s and it still uses to influence Lebanon today. We aren't turning something over to them that wasn't already theirs to begin with.
The Turkish-Kurdish-Assad-Saudi problem is nothing we are going to solve militarily. It can only be solved diplomatically unless you want to engage 100,000 plus US troops under a UN flag as a peacekeeping mission for decades. We still have the MFO in the Sinai and there is no sign that will end in the near future. The US has better ISR now in Syria and still maintains the ability to launch airstrikes at will into Syrian territory. If the Kurds need our help against ISIS the US can be there in a very short period of time.
ISIS doesn't have the supply chain of weaponry it had in 2012-14. Trump is not going to dump 650 tons of weapons to include antiarmor weapons into Syria for anti Assad forces. That was a strategic blunder by then CIA Director John Brennan (the man has some many bad decisions it's astonishing he ever rose above the level of junior analyst. He screwed up regarding Khobar Towers in KSA while station chief. He botched Bush's intelligence briefings leaving out key information he did not believe pertinent. He also was the brain behind the arming of Syrian Opposition Groups starting in the spring of 2012. All those antiarmor weapons and M-4s didn't come from Iraq in 2012 and 2013, they came from US.). Trump is attempting a reset in relations between the regional players and is also attempting to make them be more involved in regional security. His biggest problem is going to be the Turks because Erdogan hates the Kurds and Turkey lists the PKK and YPG as terrorist organizations. Guess who else lists PKK as a terrorist organization? The United States does and has since 1997. A lot of people have lobbied US presidents to remove them from the State Departments list of terrorist organizations.
The Kurds have the capability to defend themselves against the remnants of ISIS in their area. The largest pockets of ISIS fighters are in the Syrian control zones, not the coalition control zones. Trump had stated during the campaign he wanted to eliminate the caliphate, get the region powers to do more for regional security, and get the US out of Syria. Those objectives have been accomplished.
The US has had the obsession with occupation since the end of WWII. We occupied Germany, Japan, Italy, and a host of other places to include South Korea. Those nations turned into allies or were existing allies that we helped maintain free. Syria is not an ally, nor will it be. The minute probability of flipping Assad from Russia and Iran died during the Obama Administration when he started arming radical Islamists. Obama had also abandoned the Khalifa Haftar in Libya after sending him from Virginia to help oust Qaddafi. Instead Hillary and Obama supported a former GTMO detainee. So, that also helped fuel the arms into Syria. Groups were smuggling weapons from Libya into Syria and Iraq and also into the Maghreb States.
In the Gulf War, we kicked Saddam out of Kuwait, the primary objective and then shattered his army. We didn't remove him from power because even as nasty of a ruler as he was, he was still a stabilizing force within Iraq. It also kept some of our allies and enemies in the region in check. Removing Assad would create a similar problem as what happened after Saddam's removal. There would be a power struggle and this time it would likely lead to a more radical government in the Middle East even if the person did not seem so at first. Maliki was doing fine while Bush was in office because Bush was engaged with him frequently, but Obama had more of a hands off approach and Maliki drifted more and more sectarian pissing off the Sunnis. It was Maliki that ordered the Sadr militia crushed in Najaf and Karbala which resulted in Sadr fleeing for Iran. It was Obama that pushed Maliki and Sadr along with Iran together when he abandoned Iraq during the 2010 election crisis.
The Kurds have threatened to release up to 3200 ISIS prisoners. That would be stupid on their part because they are the most likely to feel the negative effects of such a decision. So, those prisoners must not seem too dangerous to the Kurds unless they desire self inflicted wounds. ISIS fighters without weapons aren't nearly as dangerous as ISIS fighters that were getting armed to the teeth by US supplied weapons.
Trump however needs to apply pressure on Erdogan for the sake of the Kurds. The Kurds have actually had cooperation from the Assad government when the Assad regime allowed them to move men, weapons and equipment through government controlled areas to reinforce in the northwest in the Afrin region. Kurdish groups have also been open to talks with the Assad regime since at least June 2018. Kurds have also joined with the Assad regime in the battle for Idlib back in September.
I could write more, but most won't even read beyond two paragraphs.
