The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir

by John Bolton

I continued to explain this approach in Syria to Trump. In the Oval for another issue on January 9, Dunford made a more detailed presentation on why an international force in a buffer zone south of Turkey’s border was doable, allowing us to extricate ourselves without profoundly endangering the Kurds and our other anti-ISIS allies, not to mention our international reputation. Dunford now vigorously defended staying in At Tanf, which Jordan’s King Abdullah had also pressed on Pompeo during his visit, noting that the longer we stayed in At Tanf, the more secure Jordan was against the risk of the conflict in Syria’s spilling across the border into his country. Trump was pleased the “two-to-four-week plan” was under way, although he still expected results in two weeks, which wasn’t happening. He seemed satisfied, but it didn’t stop a long digression on Mattis’s failure to win in Afghanistan and Syria. Then he was off wondering why, after having fought the Korean War in the 1950s, we were still there, as well as critiquing the freeloading and ingratitude of sundry allies around the world. Just for the record, I did discuss with Trump several times the history of the “temporary” 1945 division of the Korean Peninsula, the rise of Kim Il Sung, the Korean War and its Cold War significance—you know, that old stuff—but I obviously made no impact. We endured this cycle repeatedly, always with the same outcome. Every few days, someone would inadvertently press a button somewhere, and T...