THE OTHER WAR: President Trump is pulling 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria because he believes their mission aiding local forces battling ISIS has gone on long enough. At the same time, though, 500 U.S. troops are in Somalia, conducting a very similar mission aiding local forces battling al-Shabaab, an al Qaeda affiliate. As in Syria, U.S. troops are largely special operations forces who advise, assist, and accompany the Somali government and AMISOM troops in the field. AMISON is the U.N.-authorized African Union Mission to Somalia. And, as in Syria, the U.S. is providing lethal airpower to enable its partner troops on the ground to prevail in almost every engagement with al Shabaab militants.

HAPPENING TODAY, ANOTHER WALL MEETING: President Trump has invited congressional leaders from both parties back to the White House this morning (11:30 a.m.) to try again for a deal to reopen parts of the federal government and satisfy Trump’s demand for $5 billion for a southern border barrier. In a short-notice appearance in the briefing room yesterday afternoon, Trump expressed optimism that perhaps now that Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has taken the gavel as speaker of the House the dynamic might be different from Wednesday’s meeting, which produced no agreement.

“I congratulate Nancy. Tremendous, tremendous achievement,” Trump said. “Hopefully, we’re going to have a lot of things that we can get done together. And I think it’s actually going to work out. I think it’ll be a little bit different than a lot of people are thinking.”

On Capitol Hill Pelosi gave no ground. “We’re not doing a wall. Does anyone have any doubt that we’re not doing a wall?” Pelosi said last night after the passed a plan to reopen the government without border wall funding on a largely party-line vote, a bill that appears doomed in the Senate.

On the Fox News channel last night, Vice President Mike Pence also dug in, telling host Tucker Carlson, “The president’s made it clear, we’re here to make a deal, but it’s a deal that’s going to result in achieving real gains on border security. And you have no border security without a wall, we will have no deal without a wall.”’

SECRETARY WEBB? The New York Times is reporting the President Trump administration is considering Jim Webb, a former Democratic senator and Navy secretary, to be the next defense secretary, citing three unnamed administration officials. The Times notes Webb, 72, was an outspoken opponent of the Iraq war and that his views “align closely with Mr. Trump’s drive to pull American troops from the Middle East and confront China more aggressively.”

But the story also has this caveat: “How seriously he is being considered was unclear; Mr. Trump likes to float names as he considers his options for various openings in the government — sometimes to test responses and sometimes to keep the news media guessing.”

Webb, a 1968 graduate of the Naval Academy, served in Vietnam and was awarded the Navy Cross.

SUPPORT FOR WITHDRAWAL: “This is not a president that’s interested in seeing American forces all over the world,” Pence said in that Fox interview. Trump continues “the process of evaluating options” to determine the best way “of putting America first, protecting America’s interests in the region, making sure that we can confront terrorism,” the vice president added.

Still, a prominent Trump critic on Capitol Hill agrees with Trump’s withdrawal instincts. In an interview with MSNBC Wednesday, Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren said, “I think it is right to get our troops out of Syria and let me add, I think it’s right to get our troops out of Afghanistan.” The Massachusetts senator continued, “I think that everybody who keeps saying, ‘No, no, no. We can’t do that,’ in the defense establishment, needs to explain what they think winning in those wars look like and where the metrics are.”

“We’re now 17 years in Afghanistan, and we control, what is it — that the government controls less than 60 percent of the all the land. It doesn’t have the support of the people. The heroin trafficking is up. There are multiple groups that are terrorist groups throughout Afghanistan,” Warren told Rachel Maddow. “What seems to be the answer from the foreign policy establishment — stay forever. That is not a policy. We can’t do that.”

ARKIN’S PARTING SHOT: William Arkin, a highly respected military analyst, has left NBC news — and didn’t just burn a bridge, he nuked it. In a blistering memo to his colleagues, obtained by CNN, Arkin denounces the network’s obsession with what he calls the “Trump circus.”

“My expertise, though seeming to be all the more central to the challenges and dangers we face, also seems to be less valued at the moment. And I find myself completely out of synch with the network,” he writes, citing NBC’s knee-jerk opposition to all things Trump, even as he is clearly no fan of the president.

“Of course he is an ignorant and incompetent impostor,” Arkin writes in the lengthy memo. “And yet I’m alarmed at how quick NBC is to mechanically argue the contrary, to be in favor of policies that just spell more conflict and more war. Really? We shouldn’t get out Syria? We shouldn’t go for the bold move of denuclearizing the Korean peninsula? Even on Russia, though we should be concerned about the brittleness of our democracy that it is so vulnerable to manipulation, do we really yearn for the Cold War? And don’t even get me started with the FBI: What? We now lionize this historically destructive institution?”

MILLEY IN KABUL: Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley showed up in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul yesterday, where he paid a visit to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. Milley, who is Trump’s pick to become joint chiefs chairman later this year, will be saddled with managing Trump’s abrupt withdrawal plans, which have shaken Afghanistan and played a part in the postponement of key elections.

In a statement, Ghani’s office said Milley supported Afghan-led talks with the Taliban, which are being brokered by U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, according to the AP. Khalilzad has met several times with Taliban representative, who have refused direct talks with Ghani’s representatives calling the Kabul government U.S. puppets.

TRUMP’S FRACTURED HISTORY: Meanwhile Afghan officials were aghast at President Trump’s understanding of Russian involvement in Afghanistan in the 1980s and its role in the downfall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Just a reminder, here’s what Trump said in Wednesday’s marathon Cabinet room media engagement:

“Russia used to be the Soviet Union. Afghanistan made it Russia because they went bankrupt fighting in Afghanistan … The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there. The problem is it was a tough fight. And literally, they went bankrupt. They went into being called Russia again, as opposed to the Soviet Union. You know, a lot these places you’re reading about now are no longer a part of Russia because of Afghanistan.”

Most historians agree that it was the Cold War arms race with the U.S. that helped cripple the Soviet economy, that there were no terrorists going into the Soviet Union from Afghanistan, and that Moscow was not “right to be there,” since the U.S. supported the Afghan Mujahideen and supplied them with the Stinger anti-aircraft missiles that helped drive the Russians out.

A statement from President Ghani’s office described the battle against the Soviets as a “national uprising for gaining freedom” and noted, “All presidents of America not only denounced this invasion but remained supporters of this holy jihad of the Afghans.”

On Twitter Afghan Foreign Affairs Minister Salahuddin Rabbani said, “Soviet occupation was a grave violation of Afghanistan’s territorial integrity & nat’l sovereignty. Any other claim defies historic’l facts.”

Ghani’s office says it’s seeking “clarification” of the president’s revisionist history.

MUZZLING THE WATCHDOG: The Pentagon is not saying how it will carry out Trump’s order to Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan to stop the public release of inspector general reports that Trump thinks give away too much useful information to the enemy. Shanahan was hoping to meet privately with Trump after Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting but that didn’t happen. During the session, Trump railed about the insanity of releasing IG reports and said they should be kept private.

“Some IG goes over there, who are mostly appointed by President Obama — but we’ll have ours too — and he goes over there, and they do a report on every single thing that’s happening, and they release it to the public,” Trump said. “What kind of stuff is this? We’re fighting wars, and they’re doing reports and releasing it to the public? Now, the public means the enemy. The enemy reads those reports; they study every line of it.”

“For these reports to be given out, essentially — forget about the public — given out to the enemy is insane,” Trump said, turning to Shanahan, who was sitting right next to him. “And I don’t want it to happen anymore, Mr. Secretary. You understand that?”

COAST GUARD FUNDING: The Navy League is asking Congress to carve out an exemption for the Coast Guard if the impasse over government funding isn’t resolved soon. “The Coast Guard is the only agency that is simultaneously a military service, as well as a law enforcement and regulatory agency,” writes Alan Kaplan, the league’s national president in a letter to Congress. “Until funding is restored, approximately 42,000 active-duty Coast Guard service men and women will continue to report for duty to this nation without pay, as well as 340 employees of the Maritime Administration,”

“Congress can also introduce and pass a bill similar to S. 545, the Pay Our Coast Guard Act, from the 114th Congress, which provides pay and allowances to members of the Coast Guard and Reserve component, who perform active service, along with pay and allowances to civilian and contractors of the Coast Guard, until enactment of a regular or continuing appropriations provides for the same.”

IRANIAN MISSILE THREAT: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is warning Iran not to proceed with a series of space-related tests that could disguise a ballistic missile program. “The United States will not stand by and watch the Iranian regime’s destructive policies place international stability and security at risk,” Pompeo said in a statement. “We advise the regime to reconsider these provocative launches and cease all activities related to ballistic missiles in order to avoid deeper economic and diplomatic isolation.”

SEN. MCSALLY SWORN IN: Aviation pioneer and former A-10 Squadron Commander Martha McSally was sworn in yesterday along with other new members of the 116th Congress. The former Air Force fighter pilot and two-term Republican congresswoman from Tucson was sworn-in on a Bible recovered from the battleship USS Arizona. McSally is completing the final two years of the late Sen. John McCain’s term.

The Bible was loaned to Sen. McSally for the occasion by the Special Collections department of the University of Arizona library. It was recovered from the body of an unidentified sailor after the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

McSally will take a seat on the Armed Services Committee, joining fellow new Republican members — Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Rick Scott of Florida, and Josh Hawley of Missouri. For a rundown of all the changes to the committee, including the departure of Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., check out the Defense News story in our rundown.

THE RUNDOWN

Defense News: Big Shakeup Coming To Senate Armed Services

Washington Examiner: Pence: No plan to include ‘amnesty’ as part of border wall deal

Reuters: Where Do The Kurds Fit Into Syria’s War?

New York Times: Spy or Not? American Who Loves Russia Ensnared in New Cold War

Washington Post: ‘They can do what they want’: Trump’s Iran comments defy the position of his top aides

NPR: It’s Time To Get Out Of Afghanistan, Analyst Robert Kaplan Says

Bloomberg: Pentagon Suspends Largest Food Supplier in Afghanistan, Iraq

Washington Examiner: Signaling a harder edge for 2019, China threatens US carriers, an invasion of Taiwan, and nuclear war

Air Force Magazine: Acting Sec Def Blocked From KC-46 Delivery Decision, Involvement in All Boeing-Related Programs

Breaking Defense: From Paris To Orbit: France’s New Space Strategy

USNI News: Navy Tests ‘Littoral Combat Group’ Concept That Pairs DDG, LPD in South America Deployment

The Diplomat: US Shipbuilder Launches New Virginia-Class Nuclear-Powered Attack Submarine

Reuters: Brazil’s Bolsonaro Says He Is Open To Hosting A U.S. Military Base

Los Angeles Times: Could China Become The First Nation To Have Its Own Moon Base?

Washington Post: North Korea’s ambassador to Italy has gone missing, South Korean lawmaker says

Time: Opinion Why Trump’s Generals Have Abandoned Ship, James Stavridis