In 2020, Bob Woodward reported that former Trump officials boasted to him about their effective “strategy” of “scaring the shit out of the president.” They would tell him he would look “weak like Obama” if anything bad happened after he withdrew troops from anywhere. Of course, no matter what catastrophes take place where U.S. forces are stationed, those must always be taken as happening despite their best efforts and are no mark against intervention at all. From a short-term political point of view, in a country where few support the wars but even fewer actively oppose them, the safe political bet has been to let the Pentagon run on autopilot and hope the public does not pay too much attention. Obama had made the same calculation in his time.
Scott Horton