Since driving Islamic State (IS) from its territorial strongholds in Syria, a contingent of American forces has remained in the country. Thanks to their presence, Russian, Iranian, and Syrian-government forces have been kept out of the entire swath of the country east of the Euphrates River. James Jeffrey explains the value of keeping this contingent in place:

The core result of [a U.S. withdrawal] would be to give the Russians greater diplomatic and military bandwidth to increase their pressure on Turkey and Israel to withdraw from Syria as well. That would eventually leave all of Syria under the control of Bashar al-Assad, who instigated the war, and hand Russia and Iran a strategic victory. The United States would be transforming a relatively effective in-country operation that has just 900 soldiers—none of whom have been killed in almost four years—into an offshore effort against IS, presumably in coordination with the tyrant responsible for 650,000 deaths and the displacement of half his country’s population.

Assad’s efforts against IS are feckless. Moreover, military leaders at U.S. Central Command have publicly stressed the need for a U.S. footprint in Syria, not out-of-country bases, to suppress IS. Yes, . . . Iranian-backed militias attack U.S. positions in Syria—just as they do in Iraq and elsewhere in the region. But retreat encourages, rather than deters, Tehran.

The relative success of [the current American] strategy has only become more evident in the past four years, as the ceasefires have held and several attempts by Arab states to reduce Assad’s isolation have garnered no real response from Damascus. More importantly, in an era of increasing geostrategic competition, including with Russia and Iran, the United States must avoid giving away unnecessary strategic victories. The Syrian freeze might not be pretty, but it is likely what limited victory will look like going forward in Syria and perhaps elsewhere.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.