You ran off last time we debated Syria. I don’t think anyone forgets your warm feelings toward Assad, your embrace of conspiracy theories that the regime didn’t employ chemical weapons (and your shrug to chemical weapon use period), and your weak grasp of the foundational facts of the war.
Any objective analyst looking at American strategy to combat ISIL will find that Trump didn’t reinvent the wheel. Rather, he worked upon the strong foundations laid by the prior administration and accelerated Operation Inherent Resolve by loosening up the rules of engagement (which was arguably militarily unnecessary and increased collateral damage). Mosul, for instance, was well on the way to liberation by the time Trump took office.
If anything, Trump has undermined American counter terrorism though his reckless and hateful rhetoric, his disregard for civilian causalities, gutting the State Department, dismantling the Countering Violent Extremism program, ending the CIA’s support of moderate rebel factions (Timber Sycamore), which served as a green light for Russian led forces to go on to obliterate rebel held cities, and threatening to abandon Syrian Kurds (the predominant anti-ISIL military force) to Turkish aggression by his impulsive announcement to withdraw US forces from Syria. This is why SecDef Mattis resigned.
This account is simply false and reflects a poor understanding of the course of the war.
The first documented use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime was the sarin attack on Ghouta - a suburb of Damascus - on 21 August in 2013.
Think about that. Shelling a suburb of your capital city with military grade nerve agents. Does that sound like a self-assured government on the cusp of victory?
Russia didn’t intervene until the defeat of regime forces in Idlib province in 2015. In fact, it was because the opposition had grown so strong (largely as a result of the CIA’s covert arms program, know as Timber Sycamore) that the Kremlin determined it had to directly become involved to prevent an important ally from being toppled.