It came as a bolt of lightning out of the blue.  One moment the Trump administration was besieged on all sides.  The media were accusing him of treason, and the Democrats, having just taken control of the House of Representatives, were promising multiple investigations.  Robert Mueller was reportedly sharpening his prosecutorial knives, getting ready to fulfill the dream of the so-called Resistance: Behead the king!  Would the President last through his first term?  What fate awaited him as, one by one, former advisors were “turned” and prepared to testify against him in what has promised to be the kangaroo court to beat all kangaroo courts?

It was at this moment of alleged peril, when all seemed lost, that the President struck back.  No wall on our southern border?  Then he was shutting down the government.  His “advisors” were defying his peacemaking efforts from Korea to Helsinki?  Fire them!  And out went General Mattis, the alleged “adult in the room,” i.e., the official charged with making sure the President’s preferences are flouted, especially when it comes to immigration and foreign policy.

It was Mattis who had earlier convinced Trump to go against his better instincts and keep our troops in Afghanistan—indeed, even to increase their number despite 17 years of utter failure.  Now the famously vindictive Chief Executive took pleasure in reversing this hard-fought policy decision, ordering 7,000 troops home immediately.

Washington went ballistic.  The Washington Post declared the President was putting the nation in mortal “danger” somehow—as if the fate of American civilization depended on whether a horde of illiterate savages would continue to receive billions in cash, guns, and other “aid” that disappears as soon as it leaves Washington.  And of course it was all a gift for Vladimir Putin, the real ruler of the United States, who sends his orders for the day along with the President’s usual order from McDonald’s.

And, yes, believe it or not, the main objection to the President’s move was that it was “too soon” for the troops to leave!  This, after 17 years—longer than it took to defeat Hitler.  And, to boot, we’ve lost the war.  What a joke we have become.  It would be funny if it didn’t involve so much death and destruction.

Ah, but the mayhem didn’t end there.  Indeed, that was only the beginning of a very exciting day, for the President coupled this startling announcement with yet another: Suddenly, we’re out of Syria!

Poor tortured Syria, whose carcass has been picked over by any number of Islamic termites, whose Christian churches—among the oldest on earth—are in ruins, and whose long-suffering people deserve far better than what they’ve gotten.  Targeted by the neocons for regime change since the days of George W. Bush, harassed by the Israelis, disdained by the United States, the government of Syrian hereditary despot Bashar al-Assad has been the primary obstacle to a jihadist takeover of the country.  Islamist rebels, deemed “moderates” by the Obama administration and its GOP allies, were armed and trained in the U.S.  Their mission?  Overthrow Assad.

How this served American interests, no one pretended to know.  However, it did indeed serve the interests of our slimy “allies,” the Saudis, the Gulf emirates, and, standing behind them, Israel.  Assad has been a long-time target of the Zionist war machine.  The Israelis have been brazenly assisting the Islamists, openly proclaiming their preference for Al Qaeda over Iran and Iran’s regional allies.  Their American Amen Corner has been vocal about the “necessity” of U.S. troops staying in Syria indefinitely, and Trump’s decision is yet another way in which the alleged “no daylight” relationship between the U.S. and Israel is an illusion.  Syria is an important front in Tel Aviv’s battle for a “Greater Israel,” and this abandonment by the Trump administration will not easily be forgiven.  Indeed, I doubt it will be forgiven at all.  Watch all the usual suspects jump on the NeverTrump bandwagon—those who haven’t already—and observe how the attacks increase in their viciousness.

So why this sudden rebellion of a President kept largely chained, prevented from pursuing his radical agenda by “minders” and “the adults in the room”?

My theory is that the refusal of Sen. Mitch McConnell to go along with funding the Wall is what caused the explosion in the White House.  The President knows that with the failure to make progress on this key promise, and capitulation on the immigration issue in general, his chances of reelection are radically reduced.

So he decided to let the RINOs have it with both barrels in the wake of McCon nell’s betrayal.  Let the favorite foreign-policy bromides of the globalist Republicans fall by the wayside with a single stroke of the presidential pen!  As Trump pulls down the pillars of our internationalist foreign policy, one by one, the real attitude of our so-called allies comes to the fore, with jeers, recriminations, and vicious attacks on our President.  As soon as the gravy train stops, so does the “pro-American” rhetoric.  Which is fine, since it was never sincere to begin with.

While the socialist superstate known as the European Union thrives under the American-provided nuclear umbrella, U.S. troops continue to occupy Europe just as they have since the end of World War II.  What are we defending them against?  One another?  Ramshackle Russia, whose GDP is equal to that of a midsize Midwestern state?

Trump is fulfilling the promise of 2016 and is putting this country on the road to a rational foreign policy.  Empires cost money: They’re an albatross around the neck of those who found them, and a burden to all but a small minority of war profiteers.  And so we are shedding the empire, as it just doesn’t pay—as both the British and the Spanish, among others, found out.  This has Washington in an uproar so glorious that one can hardly tear one’s eyes away from the awesome spectacle.