President Donald Trump has made several incorrect or misleading statements about the five-year battle against the Islamic State group as he seeks to end what he calls “endless wars” and explain an abrupt abandonment of America’s Kurdish partners in the face of a Turkish offensive.
The future of the five-year fight against Islamic State militants is unclear, along with the entire strategy underpinning the U.S. troop presence in the U.S. Central Command region.
While President Donald Trump insists he’s bringing home Americans from “endless wars” in the Mideast, his Pentagon chief says all U.S. troops leaving Syria will go to western Iraq and the American military will continue operations against the Islamic State group.
House and Senate lawmakers on Thursday left Pentagon briefings on the crisis in Syria frustrated with the tangle of problems that came with President Donald Trump’s decision to pull troops from Syria and voicing new fears the Islamic State will regroup to wage terror.
As U.S. forces make a grab for the exit in a hurry, reports and video coming in suggest U.S. troops are dumping equipment and leaving bases in tact while stripping sensitive items.
A former U.S. military intelligence operator who spent years working with special operations forces told Military Times that the potential spillover of sensitive tradecraft or information by the SDF was “super problematic," but also a symptom of the lack of a genuine strategy in the region.