Anti-war liberals (including the media) want more war in Syria.

President Trump gives liberals what they wanted when Bush was president.  Now they hate him for that too.  So what does the president do?  He fires back.

I understand wanting to support America's allies. Conservatives understand and generally support that notion too.  But president Trump is more aligned with the libertarian viewpoint (e.g. Rand Paul).  He is also being consistent.  America first also means with respect to military activities too.

While I lean more towards working with allies who are willing to work with America, I can understand the president's viewpoint.  It's not ideal in my opinion, but I get where he is coming from.

The anti-war liberals who want to stay in Syria to help the Kurds have a consistency problem that I cannot resolve on their behalf.  Clearly Orange Man Bad trumps every other consideration for them and if the president did not pull out they would have the same level of horror with his decision.

On Syria, Dowd blames Bush again. Misses the irony.

After Maureen Dowd this week spent a good portion of an article talking about how directionless and reactive the White House has been on the situation in Syria, she felt the need to go back to the Democrat playbook and, surprise, surprise, blame it all on George W. Bush:

While most Americans shudder at the news that 400 children have been killed by a monster, they recoil at the Middle East now; they’ve had it with Shiites vs. Sunnis, with Alawites and all the ancient hatreds. Kerry can bluster that “we’re not waiting for long” for Assad to cough up the weapons, but it will be hard for him to back it up, given that a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll indicates that Joe Sixpack is now a peacenik; in 2005, 60 percent of Republicans agreed with W. that America should foster democracy in the world; now only 19 percent of Republicans believe it.

W., Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld launched a social engineering scheme to change the mind-set in the Middle East about democracy and the mind-set at home about the post-Vietnam reluctance to be muscular about imposing our values through war. They did manage to drastically change the mind-set in the Middle East and at home, but in the opposite way than they intended.

In a crouch after 9/11, the country was happy to punish an Arab villain, even the wrong one. That mass delusion, plus the economic vertigo, has sent Americans into a permanent crouch. And that’s too bad.

Aside from trying to herself throw Obama a lifeline (as she claims Putin had done with his clever, manipulative proposal to avoid American military intervention), Dowd misses entirely the very progressive liberal achievement of having the U.S. public become more isolationist and anti-war. 

That's something Democrats would have salivated over in 2006.  You'd think as an anti-war liberal (or at least anti-war liberal sympathizer) she'd be applauding him for that outcome she believes has happened today.  Nope.  It's just another opportunity to bash Bush.