The Baghdadi raid is an instructive example here. Its target—Baghdadi specifically, and ISIS more generally—was significantly a byproduct of U.S. foreign policy failures. Al Qaeda in Iraq, the forerunner of ISIS, emerged following the American invasion in 2003. Baghdadi's own career in terrorism was at "every turn…shaped by the United States' involvement in Iraq," including through his imprisonment at a U.S. detention camp. These unintended consequences argue against military intervention and for withdrawal.

This Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde foreign policy is, in some ways, an improvement over that of recent administrations, but its inconsistency risks unnecessary escalation and makes it impossible to end endless wars.

the killing of the murderous and evil Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was heavy on celebration but light on coherent strategy for America's foreign policy in the Middle East.

Fourth is the security argument: Prolonging these wars fails to keep Americans safe while undermining American power. This is true on multiple fronts. One is that terrorist activity in the Middle East can be addressed by regional powers, all of which share the United States' absolute opposition to ISIS and similar groups, even if we have grave differences on other matters. Russia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Turkey are all "right there," Trump said, and "they all hate ISIS. So we don't—you know, in theory, they should do something."

"Look," the president said, "we don't want to keep soldiers between Syria and Turkey for the next 200 years." Nor do we—or, at least, nor should we—want to keep them elsewhere in Syria or in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and beyond.

"We're in [the] Middle East now for $8 trillion," Trump continued, referencing the long-term costs of these conflicts—and lives, with casualties numbering in the tens of thousands on the American side and the millions among civilian populations in the countries where we're at war.

"They've been fighting for hundreds of years. We're out." U.S. military intervention is too often applied to problems it is incapable of resolving—problems better suited to political, religious, and diplomatic solutions implemented by people with more knowledge and interests at stake than the United States.