The Daily Star
President Donald Trump Wednesday defended his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria during an unannounced visit to Iraq, saying that many people are going to start seeing things the same way he does. Trump abruptly made the decision on Syria last week, against the advice of top aides and commanders, including Defense Secretary James Mattis, who resigned the next day.
Trump said he had told his advisers, “let’s get out of Syria,” but was then persuaded to stay, before deciding to bring the 2,000 troops home.
“I think a lot of people are going to come around to my way of thinking. It’s time for us to start using our head,” the president told reporters at the Al Asad Air Base west of Baghdad where he and first lady Melania Trump spent three hours on the ground with U.S. troops.
Trump also said the United States had no plans to withdraw its troops from Iraq, adding, “In fact we could use this as the base if we wanted to do something in Syria.”
Trump indicated he would not rush to nominate a new secretary to replace Mattis, the first defense chief in decades to resign over policy differences with the president.
Trump said Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, whom he named Sunday to replace Mattis in an acting capacity starting on Jan. 1, “could be there for a long time.”
Trump has come under withering criticism from fellow Republicans, Democrats and international allies over his decision to pull out of Syria because he believed Daesh (ISIS) militants have been defeated.
Critics argue that the decision could undercut U.S. leverage in the region and undermine diplomatic efforts to the end the Syrian civil war, now in its eighth year.
Ankara is threatening a new offensive in Syria. To date, U.S. forces in Syria have somewhat restrained Turkey’s actions against Syrian Kurdish forces.
Trump Sunday said in a tweet that he had spoken with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about a “slow and highly coordinated” withdrawal of the U.S. troops, suggesting that he might slow down the process after the barrage of criticism.
The pullout from Syria would also have dire implications in particular for neighboring Iraq. The Iraqi government now has control of all the country’s cities, towns and villages after fighting its last urban battles against Daesh in December 2017. But its political, military and economic situation remains uncertain, and the country continues to experience sporadic bombings, kidnappings and assassinations, which most people attribute to Daesh.
Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdel-Mahdi recently said Iraqi troops could deploy into Syria to protect Iraq from threats across its borders. Iraq keeps reinforcements along its frontier to guard against infiltration by Daesh militants, who hold a pocket of territory along the Euphrates River.
A complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria would leave a sizeable U.S. military presence in the region, including about 5,200 troops across the border in Iraq. Trump, who speaks often about his support for the U.S. military, had faced criticism for not yet visiting U.S. troops stationed in harm’s way as he comes up on his two-year mark in office. He told the Associated Press in an interview in October that he “will do that at some point, but I don’t think it’s overly necessary.” He later began to signal that such a troop visit was in the offing.
Trump had planned to spend Christmas at his private club in Florida, but stayed behind in Washington due to the shutdown. It’s unclear whether his trip to Iraq was added after it became apparent that the government would be shut down indefinitely due to a stalemate between Trump and congressional Democrats over the president’s demand for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Trump had previously said he was prepared for a lengthy shutdown and when asked Wednesday how long he would wait to get what he wants, he said, “Whatever it takes.”
