There is a great deal to like about Michael Doran’s essay, “The Strategy Washington is Pursuing in the Middle East Is the Only Strategy Worth Pursuing.” His critique of ostensibly objective foreign-policy analysts and journalists is devastating. Much of what passes for analysis in Washington these days is merely reflexive anti-Trumpism. As Doran quite rightly indicates, many of the same people decrying the president’s decision to withdraw from Syria were similarly outraged when National Security Adviser John Bolton declared last September, “We’re not going to leave [Syria] as long as Iranian troops are outside Iranian borders, and that includes Iranian proxies and militias.”