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Yet the Beltway hawks now want to confront Russia in Syria and Ukraine, and are looking forward to challenging China’s claims to islets in the Spratly chain by sailing U.S. warships inside the 12-mile limit.

Republican presidential candidates like Lindsey Graham are even talking up sending U.S. ground forces back into Iraq and into Syria.

What we could accomplish there, and when we could get out, are questions that are not only unanswered, they are unasked.

In analyzing the presidential race, the one conclusion upon which all agree is that the anti-Washington, anti-incumbent sentiment is far deeper and wider than most had imagined.

The surge in the polls of Bernie Sanders at the expense of Hillary Clinton, and of Donald Trump at the expense of the GOP establishment, are the political stories of the year.

And what do Socialist Sanders and Capitalist Trump have in common? Neither is an interventionist—both opposed the Iraq War.

Trump, unlike Carly Fiorina, would talk to Vladimir Putin. Unlike the departed Scott Walter, he would not tear up the Iran nuclear deal the day he took office. He would monitor and enforce it.

Unlike other Republican candidates, he does not look upon Putin’s intervention on behalf of Assad with anger and outrage. If Putin wants to bomb ISIS, be my guest, says Trump.

Trump has not laid out a broad foreign policy. Yet, the sense one gets is that, like Eisenhower, Nixon and Reagan, he is a “peace through strength” Republican who looks to extricate us from Mideast wars now underway, and not be looking to start any new ones.

For anti-interventionists, Trump vs. Sanders is the ideal race.