Despite anti-war campaign rhetoric, Trump expanded Obama’s war on terror in the region

Evidence

Trump escalated Obama’s air war against Raqqa, destroying 80 percent of the city’s buildings. However, the Trump administration also broke significantly with the Obama administration. While the latter chose not to attack the Assad regime after its use of chemical weapons in 2013, Trump carried out an airstrike on Syria’s Shayrat Airbase in April 2017 to punish the regime for using them. However, this was more a warning than an actual attack in that it did little damage to the regime’s ability to continue its war on the Syrian people. After the fall of Raqqa, in another break with Obama and most of the foreign policy establishment, the Trump administration drew down US troops in Syria, leaving only a small and largely symbolic force and abandoning the Kurds to a fight their enemy, Turkey, on their own. The key triumph of the Special Operations forces was the execution of the ISIS commander Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2019. In sum, despite his campaign promises to end the “forever wars” in the MENA region and South and Central Asia, the Trump administration continued the war on terror in several countries, particularly Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 522

Categorization

• XREF: Directly evidences the partisan-continuity claim in the vault cluster — the war on terror persists across Democratic and Republican administrations regardless of rhetoric. — connects to: Trump escalated drone strikes beyond Obama’s totals across expanded theaters. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 519; The drone war escalated dramatically under Trump across new countries — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 519; Trump continued rather than ended the war on terror in three countries (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Trump continued rather than ended the war on terror in three countries #corroborates (0.92)
• Each successive president advanced rather than curtailed the War on Terror #exemplifies (0.85) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 306
• Obama continued and expanded Bush’s imperial wars despite softer rhetoric #qualifies (0.80) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 579
• Obama’s presidency mutated and advanced rather than ended the war on terror #contradicts (0.75) — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 329
• Obama legitimized and expanded the war on terror, not reversed it #contradicts (0.72)