White House: U.S. to stay in Syria despite Trump’s talk
Pentagon officials argued strenuously against a pullout.
The White House said Wednesday that the United States is committed to continuing to fight the Islamic State group in Syria, signaling a retreat by President Donald Trump from his insistence that the 2,000 U.S. forces there quickly return home from the conflict.
“The military mission to eradicate ISIS in Syria is coming to a rapid end, with ISIS being almost completely destroyed,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the press secretary, said in a statement, using an alternative name for the Islamic State, issued one day after Trump met with military commanders to discuss the future of the mission. “The United States and our partners remain committed to eliminating the small ISIS presence in Syria that our forces have not already eradicated.”
The statement indicated that the president’s top military advisers, who have argued that maintaining U.S. forces in Syria is crucial to defeating the Islamic State and ensuring that the militant group cannot regain a foothold in the region, have succeeded — at least for now — in persuading an impatient commander in chief not to order a quick withdrawal.
The statement on Syria was issued one day after Trump made plain his eagerness to pull U.S. troops out of Syria, arguing that the United States had essentially already won the battle against the Islamic State and saying that “sometimes it’s time to come back home.”
“I want to get out — I want to bring our troops back home,” Trump said Tuesday during a news conference with leaders of Baltic nations. “It’s time. We were very successful against ISIS.”
The United States has been aiding a military campaign in Syria that has reclaimed much of the territory once under the control of the militant group. But while Trump has expressed enthusiasm for battling the Islamic State, he is reverting to the “America First” posture he pressed as a candidate, hoping to separate the United States from foreign involvement and military adventures abroad.
While Trump has pressed intensively to withdraw troops and unwind U.S. involvement, Pentagon officials argued strenuously in recent days against a pullout of all U.S. troops from Syria. They pointed to the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq after former President Barack Obama withdrew troops from there as a precedent they said laid the groundwork for the militant organization to flourish there.
Col. Ryan Dillon, spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq and Syria, said that the Islamic State still holds territory in the mid-Euphrates River Valley and noted that trying to rout the remaining militants has proved difficult as offensive operations have all but ceased in the area.
The slow pace of the campaign stems from losing Syrian Kurds — the U.S. military’s key ally in the fight against the Islamic State — to a new fight again Turkish troops in the northwestern corner of the country.
The president surprised even his own advisers last week when he said publicly that the United States would soon remove troops from Syria.
Trump then directed the State Department to halt financial recovery assistance for Syria while his administration reconsidered its policy.
He said he was consulting with allies and would soon be ready to announce a new policy.
The White House said the president spoke Monday with King Salman of Saudi Arabia, and “discussed joint efforts to ensure the enduring defeat of ISIS and counter Iranian efforts to exploit the Syrian conflict to pursue its destabilizing regional ambitions.”
In his news conference Tuesday, Trump gave a sharper account of the conversation, suggesting that the king had pressed him to maintain the U.S. troop presence in Syria as he objected.
“I said, ‘Well, you know, you want us to stay, maybe you’re going to have to pay,’ ” Trump said.