Much like President Obama, President Trump was elected as the relative peace candidate but once in office has veered into Official Washingtons neocon. The Game has an simple aim kill the enemy before they kill you. Take turns shooting until only one team remains. Arrow shows whose turn it is. Click and drag. One can easily see that when the 3,0. Should we give the U. S. military a blank check for perpetual war until it comes up with a face saving way to exit with honor Such a ruse didnt fool anyone in the Vietnam War. Indias Interests. The original U. S. Al Qaeda, is already a spent force in that part of the world. In addition, the Indian government is assisting Afghanistan economically and Afghan forces militarily and would have an incentive to do much more if the United States withdrew from the fight. India doesnt want its arch rival Pakistans support of the Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan to result in a Taliban controlled or influenced Afghan government that will augment Pakistans power in the South Asian region. Thus, the United States could let India, which has greater strategic interest in this local war than does the United States these days, take over countering the Taliban and ISIS in the region. Army CH 4. 7 Chinook helicopter pilots fly near Jalalabad, Afghanistan, April 5, 2. Army photo by Capt. Brian HarrisIn addition to re escalating an already unsuccessful Afghan War, some in the Trump administration want to ramp up the fight in Syria and assistance to the Saudi Arabian led coalition against the Houthi rebels in Yemen, who are loosely aligned with Saudi rival Iran. Trump, seemingly only to prove he was tougher than President Obama was in Syria, mounted a for show cruise missile attack on a Syrian air base after an alleged chemical weapons attack by the Bashar al Assad regime. Before the U. S. attack, the Trump administration warned the Russians and the thus the Syrians that it was coming, thus severely mitigating its effect. Lately, however, some in the Trump administration want to widen the war against ISIS in Syria to include Iranian sponsored militias that are also fighting ISIS. Yet the perils of escalation in Syria became apparent when a Syrian government plane dropped bombs near U. S. sponsored rebels, U. S. aircraft shot down the plane, and then the Russians declared that any American aircraft flying over Syrian government controlled areas would be tracked as potential targets. Russian downing of an American aircraft or vice versa would be an unneeded and dangerous escalation between two nuclear armed great powers over the outcome of a civil war in a country that is not strategic to the United States. The desire of some Trump administration officials to go after Iranian sponsored militias in Syria is part of a larger Trump inclination to support Saudi Arabia in its regional rivalry with Iran in the Persian Gulf. That regional rivalry is also playing out in the destitute country of Yemen, with the United States selling the despotic Saudis a fresh batch of expensive military equipment, some of which will probably be used to kill Houthis in Yemen, including lots of civilians. Yet if Syria is not strategic to the United States, the poor nation of Yemen is certainly not either. In the Syrian civil war, the United States should sit back and watch its adversaries fight each other ISIS and other radical Sunni Islamists versus Iran, Iranian sponsored militias, the autocratic Syrian government, and Russia. In the internecine conflict in Yemen, the Saudi coalition, which has already killed many civilians, is hardly better than Iran. In the Afghan civil war, the United States should accept defeat, withdraw its forces instead of re escalating the war and let India fully take over assisting the Afghan military in its fight against the Taliban and ISIS. In sum, Trump should avoid getting co opted by the U. S. military and honor his campaign rhetoric, which implied staying out of non strategic brushfire wars. Ivan Eland is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace Liberty at the Independent Institute. This article also appeared as a blog post at Huffington.