Cú Chulainn

2 arguments made no impression on Trump, who saw no value in having troops abroad at time when USA itself was crumbling. “We have [spent] $7 trillion in the Middle East,” Trump said at the end of the meeting. “We can’t even muster $1 trillion for domestic infrastructure.”

3 Trump's willingness to practice personal diplomacy with Kim & to envision end or serious attenuation of US troop deployment in South Korea could not have happened without his rejection of the ideology of national security that had dominated Washington elites for generations.

4 Trump impatient to end all three major wars he inherited from Obama: Afghanistan, Iraq & Syria. Woodward recounts how Trump lectured McMaster, Porter, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner in July 2017 on their return from a golf weekend about how tired he was of those wars.

5 Trump told them he wanted U.S. troops to wrap the war in Syria in six months, according to a CNN account from Pentagon sources. And when Mattis and other officials warned that the timeline was too short, “Trump responded by telling his team to just get it done.”

6 Bolton persuaded Trump to view Syria in the context of the administration’s vendetta against Iran. Bolton declared US troops would not leave Syria when as Iranian troops serve outside Iranian borders. But Mattis contradicted Bolton, saying the troops in Syria to defeat ISIS

7 Afghanistan: Trump retorted angrily generals were “the architects of this mess” & were “making it worse” by asking him to add more troops to “something I don’t believe in.” Trump folded arms & declared, “I want to get out. And you’re telling me the answer is to get deeper in.”

8 Trump’s adoption of a policy of regime change in Iran urged on him by Bolton and by Trump’s extremist Zionist campaign donor Sheldon Adelson may finally lead him to give up his resistance to the multiple permanent U.S. wars.