Senate opposes troop withdrawals
WASHINGTON » The Senate, in a bipartisan rebuke to President Donald Trump’s foreign policy, voted overwhelmingly to advance legislation drafted by the Senate majority leader to express strong opposition to the president’s withdrawal of U. S. military forces from Syria and Afghanistan.
The 68-23 vote to cut off debate ensures that the amendment, written by Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and backed by virtually every Senate Republican, will be added to a broader bipartisan Middle East policy bill expected to easily pass the Senate next week.
The vote was the second time in two months that a Republican-led Senate had rebuked Trump on foreign policy. In December, 56 senators voted to end U.S. military assistance for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen in what was the strongest show of bipartisan defiance against Trump’s defense of the kingdom over the killing of a dissident journalist, Jamal Khashoggi.
This time, the vote was even more lopsided. Trump’s declaration of victory over the Islamic State provoked a swift backlash on Capitol Hill in December when he ordered that the United States pull 2,000 troops from Syria and 7,000 from Afghanistan. McConnell, usually a reliable ally of the president’s, drafted an amendment warning that “the precipitous withdrawal of United States forces from either country could put at risk hard-won gains and United States national security.”
Without directly invoking the president’s name, McConnell countered Trump’s isolationist policies, arguing that “it is incumbent upon the United States to lead, to continue to maintain a global coalition against terror and to stand by our local partners.”
“I believe the threats remain,” he said in a speech Thursday. “ISIS and al- Qaida have yet to be defeated, and American national security interests require continued commitment to our mission there.”
Ilham Ahmed, who represents the political arm of the Syrian Democratic Forces, which has been fighting the Islamic State with U. S. military support, said in an interview that Islamic State militants were not yet defeated and that sleeper cells still lurked in northeastern Syria. “An American withdrawal would definitely affect the war,” she said during a visit to Washington to meet with lawmakers and administration officials to urge the United States to reverse or at least delay the pullout.
Ahmed was not scheduled to meet with Trump, but had an impromptu exchange with him Monday night while she was dining separately at Trump’s hotel in Washington. Introduced to her, the president shook her hand and said, “I love the Kurds,” said an adviser to Ahmed, confirming an account reported by The Washington Post.
The president Thursday found some solace in an odd place, the Democratic Party. Senate liberals, many of them exploring presidential runs in 2020, voted against the measure, signaling a growing willingness in the party to question long-running conflicts. Several prospective candidates, including Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, had endorsed Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria and Afghanistan.
And virtually every senator considering a White House run voted against the McConnell resolution, including Sanders, Warren, Gillibrand, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kamala Harris of California and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. Of the group, only Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado voted yes.