In a way, yes, this is the foreign policy for which war-weary Americans voted, but it’s not quite the one President Obama assured they were getting — in which al Qaeda would be “decimated” and wariness of Russia would be a silly Cold-War throwback — is it?

ANDREW NAPOLITANO: The general makes so much sense, but it will go in one of Barack Obama’s ears and out the other because he is so committed to the political statements that he made when he ran for reelection in 2012 saying, ‘Iraq is one, Iraq is safe, and it’s because of me that that happened, and I’m bringing the troops home.’

GEORGE WILL: The president is in fact implementing the foreign policy he promised. It was entrenchment by one word, retreat by another. He is implementing the foreign policy that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton facilitated without expressing any qualms. He is implementing a policy that the American public has said in polls it wants right now. It wants it at least until it gets queasy by looking at the pictures they have been seeing tonight.