President Trump’s declaration Wednesday that there was no need for US troops to remain in Syria and the White House’s announcement that withdrawal was imminent prompted an outcry from even some of his political allies.
GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham — a reliable Trump ally and golf buddy — said a withdrawal would have “devastating consequences” for the US interests in the region and throughout the world.
“An American withdrawal at this time would be a big win for ISIS, Iran, [President] Bashar al Assad of Syria, and Russia,” whose leader, Vladimir Putin, supports Assad, the South Carolina senator said in a statement.
“With all due respect, ISIS is not defeated in Syria, Iraq, and after just returning from visiting there — certainly not Afghanistan,” Graham said in one of several Twitter posts slamming the move.
“President @realDonaldTrump is right to want to contain Iranian expansion. However, withdrawal of our forces in Syria mightily undercuts that effort and put our allies, the Kurds at risk,” he continued before delivering what — to Trump — could be the ultimate insult.
“Withdrawal of this small American force in Syria would be a huge Obama-like mistake,” Graham said, and “be seen by Iran and other bad actors as a sign of American weakness in the efforts to contain Iranian expansion.”
Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida posted a lengthy video statement on Facebook, calling the decision “a grave error that is going to have incredible consequences, which potentially have not been fully thought through” by the president.
“In the months and years to come, [withdrawal] will lead to a potentially broader engagement which is much deadlier, much costlier and much more dangerous,” he said.
Rubio said Team Trump deserves credit for degrading ISIS, but “it is not fair or wise to say that [ISIS] has been defeated.”
The revelation also seemed to have caught the Pentagon off-guard.
“At this time, we continue to work by, with and through our partners in the region,” Pentagon spokesman Col. Rob Manning said in a statement.
And the commander-in-chief’s contention that the US had defeated ISIS in Syria also seemed to contrast with reports from the Pentagon and UN that up to 30,000 ISIS fighters remain in Syria and Iraq.
The decision also contradicted a policy announced in September by national security adviser John Bolton.
“We’re not going to leave as long as Iranian troops are outside Iranian borders and that includes Iranian proxies and militias,” Bolton said at the time.
And Brett McGurk, the US special envoy to the global coalition to defeat ISIS, confirmed that policy just days ago.
“I think it’s fair to say Americans will remain on the ground after the physical defeat of the caliphate, until we have the pieces in place to ensure that that defeat is enduring,” he said during a State Department briefing on Dec. 11.
But Trump was adamant.
“We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency,” he wrote on Twitter.
And the White House expanded on his plan in a statement.
“Five years ago, ISIS was a very powerful and dangerous force in the Middle East, and now the United States has defeated the territorial caliphate,” press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.
Many of the remaining 2,000 or so US troops in Syria are special ops forces working closely with an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF.
The partnership with the SDF over the past several years has led to the demise of ISIS in Syria, but has also outraged NATO ally Turkey, which views Kurdish YPG forces in the alliance as an extension of a militant group fighting for independence inside Turkey.
The deliberations on US troops come as Ankara threatens a new offensive in Syria.
To date, US forces in Syria have been seen as a stabilizing factor in the country and have somewhat restrained Turkey’s actions against the SDF.
The decision to withdraw would upend assumptions about a longer-term US military presence in Syria, which Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and other senior US officials have advocated to help ensure that ISIS doesn’t re-emerge.
A complete withdrawal of US troops from Syria would still leave a sizable American military presence in the region, including about 5,200 troops across the border in Iraq.
But Mattis and State Department brass have long fretted about leaving Syria before a peace agreement can be reached to end that country’s brutal civil war, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced around half of Syria’s pre-war population of about 22 million.
“We do not want to simply pull out before the diplomats have won the peace. You win the fight — and then you win the peace,” Mattis said in April.
And a pullout would allow other countries, like Iran, to increase their influence in Syria, experts said.
“If we withdraw, then who fills the vacuum, who is able to stabilize and that is the million-dollar question,” Andrew Tabler, a Syria specialist at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank, told Reuters.
“The timing is hard to understand.”
With Post wires