DON’S KURD KISS-OFF
‘We never said we have to stay’
President Trump on Monday defended his decision to withdraw troops from Syria, saying his administration had wiped out ISIS and owed no eternal loyalty to the US’s longtime ally in the fight against the caliphate, the Kurds.
“Where’s the agreement that said we have to stay in the Middle East for the rest of humanity, for the rest of civilization, to protect the Kurds? We never said that,” he told reporters during a White House Cabinet meeting.
Trump said he pulled US forces out of northern Syria because they would have been caught in the fighting between the Kurdish and invading Turkish troops.
“I don’t think it’s necessary other than we secure the oil. It’s a little different section, but we need to secure the oil,” he said.
Trump’s comments came hours after a convoy of US military vehicles retreating from northern Syria into Iraq were met with a barrage of rotting produce hurled by angry Kurds.
“America liar!” men yelled in English while pelting the armored vehicles with potatoes and fruit in the northeastern Syrian city of Qamishli, according to video posted online by the ANHA Kurdish news agency.
“Like rats, America is running away,” a man shouted in Arabic.
Still, Trump claimed a “good” relationship with the Kurds before adding, “We supported them for 3¹/2, four years. We never agreed to protect the Kurds for the rest of their lives.”
He also responded to warnings that with the Kurds now battling Turkish forces, ISIS fighters could escape Kurdish-run prisons in Syria and return to again become a global threat.
He said his administration had annihilated the ISIS caliphate.
“ISIS was all over the place,” Trump said, recalling when he was elected in November 2016.
“It was me . . . who captured them. I’m the one who did the capturing. I’m the one who knows more about it than you people or the fake pundits.”
Earlier Monday, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said the administration was weighing whether to keep a small force in Syria to act as a check on ISIS as
US troops began withdrawing across the border into Iraq.
“We have troops in towns in northeast Syria that are located next to the oil fields. The troops in those towns are not in the present phase of withdrawal,” Esper said in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Esper said that while there had been discussions about keeping some troops in Syria, “there has been no decision with regard to numbers or anything like that.”
But Trump said, “I don’t think it’s going to be necessary. I don’t want to leave any troops there. That’s very dangerous territory.”
Turkey launched an incursion into northern Syria this month — days after Trump announced the US pullout — but on Thursday agreed to a US-brokered ceasefire to let the Kurds pull out of a “safe zone” at the border.
On Monday, Trump said the Kurds would not have left the border region without the incentive of the Turkish attack.
“I think when it started for a few days, it was so nasty that when we went to Turkey and we went to the Kurds, they agreed to do things they would’ve never done before the shooting started,” he said.
“If they didn’t go through two and a half days of hell, I don’t think they would have done it. I think you couldn’t have made a deal, and people have been trying to make this deal for years.”