Republican senators sparred on Sunday over President Trump’s abrupt announcement that he will pull US troops from Syria – a decision that resulted in Defense Secretary James Mattis resigning in protest.
GOP Sen. Rand Paul defended Trump’s pullout of Syria, warning against becoming embroiled in a forever war in the Middle East.
“I’m very proud of the president. This is exactly what he promised … I think people believe that we’ve been at war too long and too many places and that we do need to turn attention to problems we have at home,” Paul of Kentucky said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
But Sen. Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said withdrawing from Syria “boggles any sane thinking.”
“I’m saddened for the broken relationships with countries that have been with us. I’m saddened for the many Kurds and others that likely will be killed and slaughtered by the Syrians or the Turks. I’m saddened for our country in being so unreliable,” the Tennessee lawmaker said on CNN.
“I have no understanding of what we did, why we did what we did in Syria. It just totally boggles any sane thinking that could take place. Boggles it. I don’t understand it, ” said Corker, who is retiring at the end of this term.
Trump announced that he would begin a rapid withdrawal from Syria, where US forces have been part of a military coalition fighting the Islamic State, in a Tweet last Wednesday that caught congressional leaders and members of his administration off guard.
“We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency,” the president posted on his account.
Paul hailed Trump’s decision, saying the US cannot be the world’s policemen.
“When the president declares victory over ISIS, he’s exactly right. We took back 99 percent of their land. Aren’t these people going to stand up and now fight for themselves? Can they not do anything? It doesn’t work to Americans there policing Muslim lands. It just engenders more terrorism. The longer
Americans stay the more terrorism you’ll have,” he said on CNN.
Corker, who was supposed to meet with Trump at the White House last Wednesday before the president canceled, said he thinks the commander-in-chief made the announcement in error.
“I think he knows that he has made a mistake. I do. The president’s tendencies are to dig in and double down even if you knows he did something incorrect,” Corker said. “I don’t think he wanted to talk about Syria that day and so the meeting was called off.”
Mattis announced his resignation on Thursday in a letter rebuking Trump for pulling the 2,000 troops out of Syria and for ignoring relationships with US allies.
On Friday, Brett McGurk, the special presidential envoy to the coalition fighting ISIS, announced he would be stepping down at the end of December instead of in February.
Speaking earlier this month about the fight against ISIS, McGurk said the administration should not claim mission accomplished in Syria.
“It would be reckless if we were just to say, ‘Well, the physical caliphate is defeated, so we can just leave now,'” McGurk said Dec. 11 during a briefing at the State Department. “I think anyone who’s looked at a conflict like this would agree with that.”