President Trump is a lot of things, but one would never go so far as to describe the man as subtle. If we solely focused on his habitual need to make every policy decision a cleverly concocted tweet for social media, this would be enough evidence to substantiate our claim, but there’s much more data to support this hypothesis. In a move that some journalists have referred to as divisive and harmful to growing tensions in the region, President Trump ordered a rapid withdrawal of some two-thousands United States armed forces members from Syria, to be completed within thirty days. Remaining true to his absence of subtlety in the slightest, President Trump declared that his removal of said troops was due to the celebratory notion that after four, hard-fought years against the Islamic State, (ISIS) the US has emerged largely victorious.
“We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.”
–President Donald Trump on Twitter
Aside from several concerns relating to the president’s third-person reference to his own administration, many members of the US government, including Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, attacked President Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria. When former president Barack Obama decided to withdraw American troops from Iraq in 2011, people were furious. Mr. Graham expressed similar frustrations regarding Trump’s similar course of action on Wednesday. Mr. Graham claimed that “if Obama had done this, all of would be furious. If Obama had done this, we’d be going nuts right now: How weak, how dangerous.”
Somewhere, in an undisclosed location, Barack Obama felt a tinge in his side, as if someone had unsullied his name. Ignoring it, Obama returned to whatever he was doing prior, which, I assume, was enjoying time with his wife and family.
“Five years ago, ISIS was a very powerful and dangerous force in the Middle East, and now the United States has defeated the territorial caliphate. We have started returning United States troops home as we transition to the next phase of this campaign.”
– Sarah Huckabee Sanders, White House spokeswoman
But I digress, President Trump’s decision to withdraw American troops stationed in Syria for the purpose of defending Syrian civilians from ISIS directly contradicts will, according to several political analysts, please US enemies by clearing the way in Syria for the Assad regime, Russia and Iran. With the United States out of the region, Assad will undoubtedly continue to commit actions violating international human rights. The fact of the matter is the US presence in Syria served and would’ve have continued to serve, a significant purpose in the region. All things considered, many ISIS cells are still operational, just not acting out in the open. By no means has anyone laid complete waste to the radical terrorist organization. According to the Washington Examiner, with the US out of the picture, we can bet that “Russia’s Idlib slaughter will begin in short order. That Syrian blood will be Trump’s companion to the Syrian lung matter that stains former President Barack Obama’s foreign policy legacy.”
Recognizing, for the moment, that the above notion is hardly partisan, some of its facts ring true. Back in September, Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the President of Turkey, announced a deal to cease violence in between Syria, Russia, and Iran on Syria’s Idlib province. The province, currently an outcrop for Islamic extremists including ISIS, will simply have a few weeks of silence as a consequence of the agreement before violence starts once more, and this time, the US will not be there to calm the waters.
“Trump himself said on the campaign trail that he may not have liked being in Iraq, but Obama ruined a lot by pulling out too early and not thinking about what would happen next. Here he is ignoring precisely that lesson. Every indicator that would tell you this is premature withdrawal is back again.”
–David Adesnik, Director of Research, Foundation for Defense of Democracies
