U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to use nuclear weapons in Afghanistan, which would kill at least 54% of the roughly 37 million inhabitants of the country.

The abandonment of about a dozen outposts across northeastern Syria hardly constitutes a substantial drawdown of U.S. forces in the region. With the president either reshuffling troops in Syria or merely relocating them elsewhere in the Middle East and a new contingent of American forces deploying to Saudi Arabia, there will actually be a net gain in U.S. troops in the region at this moment of supposed reduction.