Going back to Iraq
US troops in Syria not coming home
All of the US troops being pulled out of northern Syria will be deployed to western Iraq — where they will battle Islamic State terrorists, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on Sunday.
He did not rule out the possibility that the forces would conduct counterterrorism operations into Syria from Iraq, but said that would be worked out in time.
In Iraq, the troops have two missions, he said.
“One is to help defend Iraq and two is to perform a counter-ISIS mission as we sort through the next steps,” Esper told reporters as he traveled to Afghanistan. “Things could change between now and whenever we complete the withdrawal, but that’s the game plan right now.”
President Trump tweeted about the development after Esper made his comments, reiterating that he wanted to get the United States out of “endless wars” when he pulled the troops out.
“USA soldiers are not in combat or ceasefire zones. We have secured the Oil. Bringing soldiers home!” he wrote in the posting.
Rep. Justin Amash, a strong conservative critic of the president, scoffed at Trump’s claim that he was bringing troops home.
“Trump’s words: Bring them home. Trump’s action: Send them to Iraq,” tweeted Amash, a Michigan lawmaker who left the Republican Party earlier this year to become an independent.
Meanwhile, Esper also said the cease-fire brokered by Vice President Mike Pence and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last Thursday “generally seems to be holding.”
The move gave Kurdish fighters — who had fought with US troops against ISIS since 2014 — five days to leave northern Syria while Turkey suspends military operations.
“We see a stabilization of the lines, if you will, on the ground, and we do get reports of intermittent fires, this and that. That doesn’t surprise me necessarily,” Esper said.
Amid concerns that ISIS could re-form in the chaos, Esper was asked whether the Kurds and Turks were still controlling the prisons and camps holding the militants in northern Syria.
“I can’t assess whether that’s true or not without having people on the ground,” Esper said.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Sunday also defended the cease-fire — which critics have slammed as being overwhelmingly favorable for Turkey.
“We put out a joint statement which we think will really save lives. It’s worked so far,” Pompeo told ABC’s “This Week,” adding that fighting had largely subsided in Syria.
But Sen. Bob Menendez (NJ), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, blasted Pompeo for living in a “parallel alternate universe.”
“What the president did was a betrayal of the Kurds, who fought and died alongside us on the pursuit of ending the threat of ISIS,” Menendez told ABC.
Trump told Erdogan that he would remove US troops from the area during a call on Oct. 6, after the Turkish leader said he planned a military operation to carve a “buffer zone” out of a swathe of northern Syria.
Three days later, Erdogan launched the offensive against the Kurds — whom Ankara considers part of a terror organization that is conducting an insurgency inside Turkey.
There are more than 5,000 US troops in Iraq under an agreement between the two countries.