General: Pentagon to Soon Begin Drawdown of US Troops From Border

Says end date for military operations is December 15

Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, the commander of the US military operation at the southern border, has announced that the Pentagon is planning to begin the drawdown from the border very soon, potentially sometime later this week.

This is happening even though the migrant convoy that was meant to have precipitated this whole scramble to the border still hasn’t arrived. This adds to he belief that the whole deployment was little more than a pre-election political stunt.

It appears to whole thing might be over before the caravan really gets here in earnest, with Buchanan saying that the end date for the operation was already set for December 15, and he’s seen no indication of it continuing past that.

The operation was controversial from the start, with officials not clear what they would do, or indeed what they could legally do to the migrants. Suggestions that the troops might shoot at migrants were quickly brushed off,and while President Trump praised them for their “beautiful” barbed wire, the reality is that the deployment really did very little but make an appearance.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.