Donald Trump plans to pull US troops out of Syria despite Isis warning

'Just get it done': Donald Trump has told his generals to remove US troops from Syria
AP
David Gardner5 April 2018

President Donald Trump wants to pull all America’s troops from Syria within six months, according to officials.

Warned such a rushed departure would not allow enough time to complete America’s military mission against Islamic State, Mr Trump reportedly told his generals to “just get it done”.

In a tense meeting of his national security team this week, the president seethed over the amount of American money being spent in Syria and complained that allies were not doing enough in the war on terror.

He was forced to backtrack on his public entreaties for an immediate withdrawal of the 2,000 US troops currently in Syria after being told it could plunge the region into new chaos and leave an opening for Russia, Turkey and Iran to advance their own interests in the battle-plagued country.

But Washington sources have now claimed Mr Trump is determined to keep his promise to end America’s military involvement in Syria before November’s mid-term elections to help boost Republican hopes of fighting off a Democrat revival.

Despite clashing publicly and privately with his advisors, the president is insistent that “it’s time” for US troops in Syria to return home.

At the White House meeting, General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, reportedly asked Mr Trump what he really wanted to see happen in Syria.

Mr Trump’s response - that US troops should be out of the country within six months - is said to have exasperated his advisors.

“It is a huge gamble that ISIS is not going to come back and that we are going to rely on others to stabilise Syria,” an administration official told CNN. “The President blasted Obama for a timeline in Iraq, but that is in essence what we have been given.”

Mr Trump argues that the US has essentially won the battle with IS and its military contingent in Syria is no longer needed.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said the president was intent on handing responsibility for Syria over to local players.

“We want to focus on transitioning to local enforcement and do that over this process to make sure there is no reemergence of ISIS in a way that takes away some of the progress we have made,” she said during a briefing at the White House.

“As the president has maintained from the beginning, he’s not going to put an arbitrary timeline. He is measuring it in actually winning the battle, not just putting some random number out there,” she added.

Mr Trump is said to be particularly irritated that Gulf nations, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have not contributed resources to fight IS.

“Without us you wouldn’t last two weeks. You’d be overrun. And you’d have to fly commercial,” he allegedly told one Gulf monarch.

As the president made it clear he wants American troops out of Syria, he signed a proclamation last night sending National Guard soldiers to America’s border with Mexico.

Claiming the “situation at the border has now reached a point of crisis,” he sent a memo to his national security chiefs deploying National Guards to stop the flow of drugs and illegal immigrants into the US.

Mr Trump said that “lawlessness” at the border is “fundamentally incompatible with the safety, security, and sovereignty of the American people.”

He added that his administration “has no choice but to act”.

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