American policy on Syria took a U-turn with the news that President Donald Trump was preparing for a “full” and “rapid” withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Syrian civil war. Trump:“We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there.”
By September, ISIS had lost 99 percent of the territory its vaunted caliphate once held, according to a Pentagon Inspector General’s report.
This decision will upset most of Washington’s foreign policy establishment, which generally supports a more expansive war in Syria.
U.S. forces protecting Kurdish allies have engaged in tense stand-offs with Turkish forces in northern Syria. Israel attacks on Iranian-backed forces in Syria risk wider war that could embroil U.S. forces.
Most worrying, given the nuclear stakes, is the potential for inadvertent war with Russia. In February, U.S. commandos and airstrikes killed scores of Russian “mercenaries” in a prolonged battle. Ambassador James Jeffrey later remarked of the incident that “this has occurred about a dozen times in one place or another in Syria,” and “there have been various engagements [with the Russians in Syria], some involving exchange of fire, some not.” This revelation somehow did not set off alarm bells in Congress, which never authorized the war in Syria, let alone conducted serious oversight of it.
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