Trump Made Syria Decision Without National Security Team, Allies, Officials Say

[Jim Morrison]

Like I said in the other threads, Trump isn't handling the withdrawal at all in the correct way (he should be talking with allies in the region, putting diplomatic and economic pressure on Turkey so they don't go after the Kurds, etc.). But that doesn't mean withdrawal is the wrong move. Our presence in Syria is illegal. We're arming multiple jihadist groups, fighting other jihadist groups and Assad at the same time. We've mission creeped to the point where there's now 2,000 troops there. All without a single fucking vote in Congress. It's lunacy. All we're doing is contributing to the violence and dickwaving towards Russia and Iran at the cost of American lives.

[TornadoAP]

The problem is that we're already inside Syria. We've made commitments to allies such as the Kurds, and to the world to defeat ISIS, and we have kept neither by pulling out. I agree that we shouldn't have been there in the first place, but we were already there now and we've royally screwed up the region even more now by withdrawing troops.

[Jim Morrison]

A year ago our government was telling us we had to get rid of Assad. Now they're telling us it's about ISIS? Are we fighting a two-front war now? The Syrian government and the Kurds have done most of the heavy lifting fighting ISIS and they've been largely successful in driving them back. This is exactly the same goalpost moving we saw with Iraq. First Saddam was involved in 9/11, then he had WMDs, then he was just a bad guy we had to get rid of. We shouldn't be tolerating this.

[TornadoAP]

The troops inside Syria weren't actually doing anything. They were standing there as auxiliary support for the Kurds mostly, especially in their fight against ISIS and to keep a watchful eye on Turkey. You're right that the Kurds are responisble for the death of ISIS, and we helped them, and now we're withdrawing all support, even airstrikes.