After consulting with his advisers, US President Donald Trump has reportedly agreed to keep US troops in Syria, backtracking on his announcement last week that the US will be withdrawing from Syria soon.
04/04/2018
US President Donald Trump has reluctantly agreed to keep US troops on Syrian soil after consulting with his advisers, MSNBC reported on Wednesday.
The White House issued a statement saying ISIS is “almost completely destroyed,” but added that “the United States and our partners remain committed to eliminating the small ISIS presence in Syria that our forces have no already eradicated.”
Last week, while speaking in an Ohio rally, Trump announced that US troops will be withdrawing from Syria in the near future. He praised the US-led coalition for “knocking the hell out of ISIS” and added, “We’ll be coming out of Syria like very soon. Let the other people take care of it now.”
“We’re going to have 100% of the caliphate, as they call it – sometimes referred to as ‘land,'” Trump continued. “But we’re going to be coming out of there real soon. Going to get back to our country, where we belong, where we want to be.”
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has warned that pulling out of Syria would be “the single worst decision” Trump could make.
“I’ve seen this movie before, when Obama did the same thing in Iraq,” Graham said in an interview with Fox News. “This is a disaster in the making. All of his military advisers have said we need to leave troops in Syria to work with them, calm down the conflict between Turkey and the Kurdish fighters who have helped make sure that it does not fall back into the hands of ISIS.”
“If we withdrew our troops anytime soon ISIS would come back, the war between Turkey and the Kurds would get out of hand, and you would be giving Damascus to the Iranians,” he added. “Without an American presence, Russia and Iran would dominate Syria.”
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