This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, February 11th, 2019.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The President has ordered the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria over the objections of war buffs in his administration?

What challenges stand in the way for an end to U.S. involvement in Syria?

And even if all U.S. troops leave the country, does that really mean the end of US involvement.

Cato's John Glazer comments.

A general or multiple generals who said look we were not consulted on this particular decision, but they've known

for at least months that this decision was probably coming, and they've known since Donald Trump went out on the campaign trail that this was a possible outcome and that they need to be thinking about it.

So it's at least odd for outcome and that they need to be thinking about it.

So it's at least odd for the generals to seem

wholly unprepared for an announcement

from the commander-in-chief of the US Armed Forces that this removal

withdrawal of US troops from Syria needs to begin soon.

Yeah, I think there's probably a useful distinction here between the military leadership

and the other prominent national security officials in Trump's administration.

You know, of course there was a lot of hullabaloo about Trump's failure to, you know, put this through an interagency process and inform everybody that a withdrawal was coming, etc.

Instead of just announcing it publicly and surprising most of his cabinet,

but you're right to say that Trump had long been talking internally

at the White House about withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria.

The military so far has been abiding by Trump's plan to withdraw.

It's slower than Trump would have liked.

What's happened is they've continued to fight ISIS in its final stronghold in the southeast in Syria.

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