Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Letters: Legal not to leave Syria
Pentagon, State say U.S. troops can stay, Congress not factor
The executive branch has decided that it needs no new legal authority from Congress to indefinitely keep military forces deployed in Syria and Iraq, even in territory that has been cleared of Islamic State fighters, Pentagon and State Department officials said.
In a pair of letters, the officials illuminated the presidential administration’s planning for an open-ended mission of forces in Syria beyond the Islamic State fight. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson foreshadowed the plan in a speech last month, saying troops will stay in Syria to curb Iran and prevent the Syrian government from reconquering rebel-held areas.
Though Tillerson also cited a need to mop up the remnants of the Islamic State extremist group and keep from leaving a vacuum in which the group could regenerate, other administration officials put far greater emphasis on the extremists. In the letters, they said the continued potential threat from the Islamic State provided a legal rationale for President Donald Trump’s administration to keep U.S. troops deployed there indefinitely.
“Just as when we previously removed U.S. forces prematurely, the group will look to exploit any abatement in pressure to regenerate capabilities and reestablish local control of territory,” wrote David Trachtenberg, the deputy undersecretary of defense for policy.
About 2,000 U.S. troops are in Syria, where nearly all the territory once held by the Islamic State has now been liberated. Tillerson deemed the group “substantially, but not completely, defeated,” warning that the insurgents remained a threat.
Trachtenberg wrote the letter to Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who had asked the Trump administration to explain its understanding of its authority to stay on in Syria. The State Department sent him a similar letter, which also argued that international law provided a basis for U.S. forces to remain in Syria — despite the lack of consent from the Syrian government — to protect Iraq and the United States from terrorists.
And both letters said U.S. troops may strike at Syrian government or Iranian forces deemed to threaten Americans or Syrian rebel groups that are assisting the United States in fighting the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.
“The United States does not seek to fight the government of Syria or Iran or Iranian-supported groups in Iraq or Syria,” wrote Mary Waters, the assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs. “However, the United States will not hesitate to use necessary and proportionate force to defend U.S., coalition or partner forces engaged in operations to defeat ISIS and degrade al-Qaida.”
U.S. troops carried out strikes against forces loyal to President Bashar Assad of Syria several times in 2017 in the name of defending U.S.-supported rebel groups.
Especially as a matter of international law, the administration’s theory for why the United States will have authority to keep carrying out such operations indefinitely amounts to “a tenuous legal justification atop of another tenuous legal justification,” said Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor and former Justice Department lawyer in former President George W. Bush’s administration.
And in a statement addressing domestic law, Kaine said the executive branch was stretching its interpretation of its war authority too far. He called on the Trump administration to seek new authorization for any continued, long-term mission in Syria and Iraq — especially “to strike pro-Assad forces in areas devoid of ISIS to protect our Syrian partners who seek Assad’s overthrow.”
He also criticized the basis on which the administration ordered strikes on a Syrian government air base in April as punishment for using chemical weapons. At the time, Trump claimed powers as commander in chief to issue the strikes rather than on any theory of congressional authorization.
The senator accused Trump of “acting like a king by unilaterally starting a war.”
Elsewhere, world leaders called Thursday for an urgent cease-fire in Syria as government forces pounded the opposition-controlled eastern suburbs of the capital, Damascus, in a crushing campaign that has left hundreds of people dead in recent days.
The U.N. Security Council heard a briefing from U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock on what he called “the humanitarian disaster unfolding before our eyes” in the rebel-held suburbs known as eastern Ghouta.
Sweden and Kuwait were seeking a vote on a resolution ordering a 30-day cease-fire to allow relief agencies to deliver aid and evacuate the critically sick and wounded from besieged areas to receive medical care.
But Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, who called Thursday’s meeting, put forward last-minute amendments, saying the proposed resolution was “simply unrealistic.”
He also accused global media outlets of orchestrating a disinformation campaign that ignored what he claimed were thousands of fighters, including al-Qaida-linked militants, that were shelling Damascus from eastern Ghouta and taking refuge in hospitals and schools.
Council members said they needed to study the Russian proposals.
“We will try and find a way forward that works for everyone,” Sweden’s U.N. ambassador, Olof Skoog, told reporters, adding that a vote was likely today.
Information for this article was contributed by Philip Issa, Zeina Karam, Bassem Mroue, Edith M. Lederer, Vladimir Isachenkov and Suzan Fraser of The Associated Press.