By Danny Sjursen

January 18, 2019 "Information Clearing House" -     As the nation continued to reel from President Donald Trump’s shock decision last month to remove all U.S. troops from Syria, news came Wednesday that an unknown number of U.S. soldiers were among at least 15 killed in a bombing in northern Syria. Amid such continued violence, one would think the president’s withdrawal would have ever more urgency. And yet, just about everyone in Washington has attacked his decision to pull out.

The reflexive hatred for Trump that dominates the national conversation is bad for the U.S., especially when it comes to foreign policy. This is not to say that the president isn’t a flawed figure; after all, I’ve spent the better part of two years critiquing most of his policies. Still, when the man demonstrates prudent judgment—as in his recent calls to pull U.S. troops out of Syria and Afghanistan—he should be applauded. But that’s unlikely to happen in a divided America, as long as an interventionist, bipartisan consensus runs the show in Washington.

Some call it the deep state, others the swamp—but the terminology hardly matters at this point.  This forever-war crowd of congressional members, media pundits, arms industry CEOs and semiretired generals holds the reins on foreign policy in ways that are counter to the war-exhaustion instincts of both Trump and the American public. And it has to stop.

That’ll be no easy task, of course, as the military-industrial-congressional complex has gathered ever more power in the generations since President Dwight D. Eisenhower—a Republican—coined the term. Still, there’s one way, in the near term, to expose Beltway bellicosity on foreign affairs: Force Congress to publicly debate and vote on each of America’s ongoing wars. Let’s start with Syria, since it’s there that President Trump has a rare opportunity to shift the onus of responsibility for the bloody conflagration onto U.S. representatives. And that’s the last thing cowardly congressional members want.