WASHINGTON (AP) — Washing his hands of America’s presence in Syria, President Donald Trump declared Wednesday the U.S. has no stake in supporting the Kurdish fighters who died by the thousands as U.S. partners against Islamic State extremists.
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Condemnation of his stance was quick and severe, not only from Democrats but from Republicans who have been staunch Trump supporters on virtually all issues.
The House, bitterly divided over the Trump impeachment inquiry, banded together for an overwhelming 354-60 denunciation of the U.S. troop withdrawal. Many lawmakers expressed worry that it may lead to revival of IS as well as Russian presence and influence in the area — in addition to slaughter of many Kurds.
At the White House, Trump said the U.S. has no business in the region — and not to worry about the Kurdish fighters.
“They know how to fight,” he said. “And by the way, they’re no angels.”
Trump said he is fulfilling a campaign promise to bring U.S. troops home from “endless wars” in the Middle East — casting aside criticism that a sudden U.S. withdrawal from Syria not only betrays the Kurdish fighters but stains U.S. credibility around the world and opens an important region to Russia, which is moving in.
“We have a situation where Turkey is taking land from Syria. Syria’s not happy about it. Let them work it out,” Trump said. “They have a problem at a border. It’s not our border. We shouldn’t be losing lives over it.”
Trump said he was sending Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Ankara to urge the Turks to halt their weeklong offensive into northeastern Syria. But his remarks, first to reporters in the Oval Office and later at a news conference with his Italian counterpart, suggested he sees little at stake for America.
“Syria may have some help with Russia, and that’s fine,” he said. “They’ve got a lot of sand over there. So, there’s a lot of sand that they can play with.”
“Let them fight their own wars.”
More than once, Trump suggested the United States has little at stake in the Middle East because it is geographically distant — a notion shared by some prior to Sept. 11, 2001, when al-Qaida militants used Afghanistan as a base from which to attack the U.S. That attack set off a series of armed conflicts, including in Iraq, that Trump considers a waste of American lives and treasure.
The current withdrawal is the worst decision of Trump’s presidency, said South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who meets often with the president and is one of his strongest and most important supporters in Congress.
“To those who think the Mideast doesn’t matter to America, remember 9/11 — we had that same attitude on 9/10 2001.”
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said he strongly disagreed with Trump and had told the president so. But he asked, “What tools do we have” to back up that disagreement?
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., told reporters he didn’t know what could be done to undo the harm he felt was resulting.
“There are some mistakes that are not easy to reverse. And there are some that are irreversible,” said Rubio, who was a Trump rival for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016.
Turkish troops and Turkish-backed Syrian fighters launched their offensive against Kurdish forces in northern Syria a week ago, two days after Trump suddenly announced he was withdrawing the U.S. from the area. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said he wants to create a 30-kilometer (20-mile) -deep “safe zone” in Syria.
Ankara has long argued the Kurdish fighters are nothing more than an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which has waged a guerrilla campaign inside Turkey since the 1980s and which Turkey, as well as the U.S. and European Union, designate as a terrorist organization.
Trump mischaracterized the progress made thus far by the U.S. military in carrying out his instructions to withdraw all 1,000 troops in northeastern Syria. He referred to the approximately two dozen soldiers who evacuated from Turkey’s initial attack zone last week, but cast that as meaning the U.S. has “largely” completed its pullout.
A U.S. official familiar with planning for the withdrawal of the 1,000 said that they are consolidating onto two main bases but have not yet begun flying out of Syria in significant numbers. Military equipment is being gathered and flown out, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the withdrawal, which poses big security risks.
Trump downplayed the crisis that followed his decision to pull out of Syria, which critics say amounted to giving Turkey a green light to invade against the Kurdish fighters.
“It’s not between Turkey and the United States, like a lot of stupid people would like you to believe,” Trump said, adding that he’s more than willing to let adversaries fight it out in that area of the Middle East.
In the meantime, he said, “Our soldiers are not in harm’s way, as they shouldn’t be.”
Trump did impose new sanctions on Turkey this week in an attempt to force Erdogan to end his assault. But he said Wednesday, “It’s time for us to come home.”
Even as Trump defended his removal of U.S. troops from northeastern Syria, he praised his decision to send more troops and military equipment to Saudi Arabia to help the kingdom defend against Iran.
Trump said the U.S. is sending missiles and “great power” to the Saudis, and “they’re paying for that.”
Trump’s policies are made on a whim, without consultation with the State Department, Pentagon, our military, and our allies. He’s not only incapable, but hazardous to our interests.
TOXIC TRUMP has the blood of the Kurds, the second best fighters in the Mid-east (after ZIONIST ISRAEL), our former allies who he totally sold out to dictator Erdogan, on his filthy hands. GOP finally woke up and are dumping on him.
impeach NOW !
Trump’s sanity must certainly be questioned. The ignorant man who acts on the spur of the moment is a grave danger to all. Will Archy and his comrades defend Trump when he turns on Jared?
He’s as crazy as Idi Amin was.
How far is Israel from the President?
All of the 9/11 hijackers were from 7,000 miles away. Trump sounds like a moron but when you actually think about what he says he actually sounds like he has a serious mental disability.
Listen to senator Paul interview this past Sunday and you’ll see it’s not as simple as the AP makes it . There are Kurds in Iraq and Kurds in Syria . The two Kurds don’t get along nor cooperate . Then you got turkey against Kurds aha st Assad and against isis . This is all with the USA stuck between this mess . Senator Paul quotes intelligent sources etc … The pull out makes me a bit uneasy myself but if you think for a minute you’d see we are just stuck in this Never ending mess .
anyone knows why trump doesn’t wear glasses? Because he already has 2020!!! Go tumpbest president for Israel !!!
We heard the same bubba meises (which Congress is expousing), from Lyndon Johnson in 1965, that we had to stop the communists in Southeast Asia; otherwise, they would be on the West Coast. As a result of his idiotic decision to expand a war which could not be won, nearly 60,000 Americans were killed, as well as millions of Vietnamese. If he would have minded his own business, the war would have ended nearly a decade sooner. My point is that Trump is correct on this one. We have no business sticking our noses into Syria. It is essentially a civil war, as Vietnam was. Regarding the 9/11 hijackers, they never would have succeeded if the FBI and CIA spoke to each other, and exchanged information, and if the idiotic airlines had better security, such as El Al. The Congress personnel who voted for a resolution blasting Trump, regarding his withdrawal from Syria are hypocrites. They would not send their children in harms way, in the armed forces of the USA; the vast majority of them, never served one day in uniform, either. We cannot police the entire world. Various ethnic groups, around the world have been killing each other since the beginning of the world. It was only 25 years ago, that there was a genocide in Rwanda, whereby 900,000 Hutu African men, women, and children, were slaughtered within a 90 day period by Tutsi militias. Where was the whole world then, especially the U.S. Congress, and Clinton who knew what was going on, but did bupkis to save them? All of a sudden, these same self righteous phonies, are making a big tsimmis regarding the Kurds.