As the White house prepares it's excuse for another attack on the Syrian government, we needn't look far to find the reason why.
With Assad gaining ground, and IS facing defeat if not yet extinction, the US imperative to protect it's investment in the destabilization process and keep a foothold in the region seems to outweigh any desire or rational thought in imagining what happens next.
The middle East is littered with the results of unintended consequences of outside, and particularly Western, actions. Each one, it appears, more catastrophic than the previous.
But it all seemed to start so well.
Afghanistan fell quickly in the post 9-11 consensus, and, with Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda sent into hiding, there was a real chance of bringing some stability and order to the region, but Bush Jnr. had other ideas, so forgetting Afghanistan, and with Blair in tow and WMD as the excuse, he decided to invade Iraq and we are now experiencing how that turned out.
All the while, we have ignored the Gulf States and Turks funding and supplying the terrorists, with the excuse of supporting our 'allies' (who just happen to also be our ideological, and sometimes physical, enemies).
I suggest that president Trump should not take too much comfort from knowing that somewhere in Washington someone is busily working on the excuse for when it all goes horribly wrong, again.