"Pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan seems, irresponsible to say the least. Certainly surrending the whole country of Afghanistan back to the Taliban would be a

"Pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan seems, irresponsible to say the least. Certainly surrending the whole country of Afghanistan back to the Taliban would be an incredible blemish, and no citizen of another nation would ever risk their lives to help a nation who so callously discarded those who did the same." That's the logic I'm sure the US had during the Vietnam War, and it proved to be flawed then. Especially interesting given that less than 50 years later we are improving our diplomatic and even military relationship with Vietnam due to our mutual adversary: China. "I think the Taliban and Isis and Assad (where the US gets criticized both for not doing enough and doing too much) and Hussein are horrific people and entities." Curious how Assad gets lumped in with those. In 2010 Syria had one of the highest levels of development in the region (much like Qaddafi's Libya). I've been following the Syrian Civil War from a number of sources since its inception. The level of brutality he employs is pretty moderate for the region, magnitudes lower than ISIS/Taliban (with their mass executions, beheadings, enslavement and rape, etc...) or Saddam Hussein (https://www.hrw.org/reports/1993/iraqanfal/ https://www.hrw.org/reports/1993/iraqanfal/ ). As for where do we go from here, you first need to understand the larger strategic implications of WHAT/WHY the US does what it does. For that, see my other response in this thread.