“I’m trying to get out of wars. We may have to get in wars, too,” Trump said on Monday at the White House.
Trump’s comments came after residents of a Kurdish city in Syria hurled potatoes and insults at departing U.S. troops on Monday, the latest sign of the Kurds’ bitter sense of betrayal after President Donald Trump seemed to pave the way for a deadly Turkish assaultthat began nearly two weeks ago.
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The Turkish invasion has created chaos in the region, with Iran, Russia and Syria’s brutal dictator, Bashar al-Assad, vying for influencein the vacuum left by the U.S. withdrawal.
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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria has created “a strategic nightmare for our country.”
In an op-ed for the Washington Post, McConnell wrote that it has jeopardized the U.S. campaign against the Islamic State, handed a win to the Assad regime and its Iranian backers, and allowed Russia to gain a new foothold in the Middle East.
Navy Vet
Article URL : https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2019/10/21/syria-shift-trump-says-small-number-us-troops-stay/4052014002/