We can't. They're already attacking us here. Perhaps you haven't noticed because we keep hearing about lone wolves, workplace violence, no connection to Islamic terrorists, etc, etc. We walk away now, they get stronger, get more recruits and hit us harder. Of course, we could always do another hashtag. We're good at hashtags.
That's not really true. Until we told the Iranian whom they could elect and armed bin laden in Carter and Reagan's bid to rid the world of the Soviets ... didn't have that much trouble. Not even that much over our support for Israel.
To me, it's irrelevant how we got here. The fact is, we are here now. I don't think it would be much better if we just walk away.
Well, I think Old School's point is that given OUR involvement in THEIR affairs seems to have engendered what we in the West call terrorism, continuing and expanding our involvement in their affairs is not going to dissuade them. And that is demonstrably provable, because every time we encounter self-radicalized Muslims who are legal residents or citizens, their motivation seems to be anger at our actions somewhere outside of the US. Not that I think there's any excuse for killing innocent people.
Trump believes, at least the extent he doesn't flip flop, that W's invasion was a catastrophe. And it was. I'd even argue Poppy's was too. And, Assad at least let people live impoverished lives if they didn't challenge him. And I thought our Syrian "strategy" was not a good idea. However, Trump's strategy of "Bombing the shit out of them" is not a strategy, because they are more innocents than terrorists in the areas Trump would bomb the shit out of.
Isis in N. Iraq is on the way out. What comes next is the question. Having an Iranian backed shia army kicking the hell out of sunnis sort of has the potential for a world war. The Kurds have a history of using bombs to blow up Turkish civilians for the fact that the Turkish govt has been mean to Kurds.