(10-14-2019 09:17 AM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote:  That's why I brought it up. The hypocrisy you folks show is incredible.
According to the Washington Post, President Trump has made 13,435 false or misleading claims over 993 days. And his supporters laugh them off as his little lies. I think the 50 vs 1000 U.S. troops in Northern Syria is about as significant and etched-in-stone as you can have for evidence as to his mindset and proof you can't believe anything he says is true (it was something I brought up on the main spin board - not here). And Owl #'s tried to pooh-pooh it away as insignificant (not trying to pick on him but he was the only Rice person who commented on it - others accused me of just hating Trump).

My point was not to pooh-pooh anything, but to make the clear point that neither 50 nor 100 nor 1000 was enough to make any material difference. Either we fight to win, which means hundreds of thousands of troops, or we don't fight at all.

Never fight a war that you don't intend to win. Putting 50 or 100 or 1000 troops into a situation like Syria is fighting not to win. Wars end two ways--either you win or you surrender. We are fighting to surrender in Syria, and for that matter in the rest of the Mideast. Fighting to surrender is not worth one American 20-something's life or limb. But we've sacrificed a bunch of them for naught. Go in full bore without strangling yourself with nonsensical rules of engagement, kill everybody who needs killing until they get tired of dying (which we still haven't done in Afghanistan), break everything that needs breaking, GTFO and stay TFO, after telling the folks you leave in charge that if they screw up, we will be back to kill them. If you're not prepared to do that, then don't get involved.

Never, never, never, never fight a war that you don't want anybody to win. Syria is a war between Daesh/ISIS on one side and Assad and Russia on the other. Which of those sides do you want to win?

I'm sorry that you didn't comprehend the point that I was making.