John Bolton was on Fox News to answer questions about whether Trump has been as successful as he claims against ISIS.
Here’s what he had to say:
It’s undeniable that Trump had been very successful against ISIS in both Syria and Iraq. As Bolton says, Trump has made clear that Neville Chamberlain doesn’t live in the White House.
But I do like a point that Bolton made, a point I wish he’d expound on more, about how we are using Iranian proxies to help us defeat ISIS. Bolton says he’s always disagreed with this strategy.
It’s true Obama started working with them and Trump has continued working with them. The problem is that Iran is now taking over portions of Iraq while Turkey is taking over portions of Syria.
Let’s be clear, the Baghdad government is really an Iranian institution. So from that perspective they have the government of Iraq already. But last week Trump and the US just stood by while Iran took over Kirkuk, a stronghold of the Kurds (You can read about how they did that here). And what’s so bothersome about this is that, by several accounts, Iran is seizing these territories to build a land bridge from Tehran the Mediterranean. This is something I’ve read they’ve wanted for a long time and Kirkuk was one of the last places they needed to make this happen. Israel is surely not happy about Iran’s desire for this land bridge.
Not to mention Turkey is taking over the Kurdish areas of northern Syria, which is something I believe the US has opposed. They just finished an operation in Idlib and are now headed to Afrin. And those are just the latest cities.
It also appears Turkey and Iran are working together on this, splitting up the territories between themselves – at least to some degree. They have been meeting with each other a lot lately.
My point is that while it’s great that ISIS is being destroyed in Iraq and Syria and Trump should get credit for that, a bigger foe is taking it’s place and we don’t seem to be doing much to dissuade this from happening.
Of course my personal belief is that we are witnessing the end times falling into place just as the scriptures predicted. The beast is putting its empire back together again which is a prelude – by who knows how many years – to the ultimate invasion of Israel. Turkey and Iran are the two biggest players in that invasion.
But even if I’m wrong about that, what we are seeing now is not good on any day. So let’s not start a parade over the end of ISIS in Iraq and Syria. I think this is only a beginning of something even worse.
As a side note – we know that Turkey helped create ISIS. Could this have been the plan all along, to eventually defeat ISIS and take over the areas that they had captured?