Pentagon prepares for more rash decisions after Trump's disastrous withdrawal from Syria

Donald Trump blindsided military brass when he decided to suddenly pull soldiers out of Syria after a phone call with Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan — so much so that the military had to bomb its own munitions stash because troops were so ill-prepared to leave.

And because military officials don’t trust Trump to learn from his mistakes, they are making sure they are prepared to pull troops from other areas of the world in a hurry — specifically Afghanistan — should Trump make a similarly hasty call in the future, according to a report from NBC News.

According to NBC’s report, military officials called their preparations to leave Afghanistan in a moment’s notice “prudent planning.”

They stressed that Trump doesn’t currently have plans to pull troops from Afghanistan.

However, Trump has said in the past that he wants to bring those troops home. And given Trump’s proclivity for making announcements without consulting others and popping off decisions on Twitter, the military wants to be ready in case Trump decides to withdraw troops from Afghanistan on a whim.

Trump’s move to pull troops from Syria isn’t the first time the military was blindsided by a Trump decision.

Back in July 2017, the Pentagon was worried Trump was going to announce on Twitter that he wanted to launch military strikes against North Korea.

And earlier this year, Trump announced on Twitter that he was banning transgender individuals from serving in the military — a policy the Pentagon had not been alerted to until the tweets.

Now, the military has been burned by Trump enough times that they are officially planning for what to do in case of Trump’s impulsive decisions.

This is how the military has to handle the man who has the nuclear codes.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.