Trump to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, says “I’m not siding with anybody”

It is foolish in the extreme, and ultimately self-defeating, to keep troops anywhere indefinitely, with no end point, no plan for victory, no clear goal — that just saps the nation’s resources and produces no good result. Anytime we leave Syria or anywhere else, anti-American elements will do their best to capitalize on our absence. But if the answer to this is to keep troops everywhere, then they will never come home, and we will need to send them into many more countries than those they’re currently in.

That way lies madness. And destruction. What is needed instead is a massive reevaluation of the basic assumptions of U.S. foreign policy, so that our energies, and our armed forces, are directed much more efficiently than they are now to blunting the force of the global jihad. We can hope that with the withdrawal from Syria, that reevaluation is on the horizon.

“Trump says he’s ‘not siding with anybody’ with Syria withdrawal,” by Kathryn Watson, CBS News, October 7, 2019:

Washington — President Trump didn’t let intense Republican criticism of his decision to withdraw troops from northern Syria rattle him Monday, insisting he made the right call in deciding to leave the unstable region to Turkey and other actors.

Experts and the president’s own allies like Senator Lindsey Graham fear the decision to withdraw from the region will endanger Kurdish allies there, with Turkey threatening to overwhelm them. Mr. Trump, asked why he’s siding with authoritarian Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan over Kurdish allies, insisted he’s not siding with anyone and is adhering to his campaign promise of “America first.”

“I’m not siding with anybody. We’ve been in Syria for many years. You know, Syria was supposed to be a short-term hit,” the president said in the Roosevelt Room, where he signed two trade agreements with Japan.

The president said he’s leaving the region in the hands of Turkey, Russia, Iran, Iraq and Syria — which is exactly what allies fear. Mr. Trump explained that he campaigned on pulling the U.S. out of needless wars in the Middle East, and noted the worst part of his job is writing to families of American soldiers who died….

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