Trump, under fire, rows back on Syria

‘In no way have we abandoned the Kurds’

Donald Trump on Tuesday appeared to backtrack on his promise to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria after it provoked a firestorm of criticism.

The U.S. president said on Monday that he wanted to extricate troops from “ridiculous endless wars.”

But he faced an immediate backlash from fellow Republicans, the intelligence community and foreign leaders who claimed that such a move would send a troubling message to American allies around the world.

On Tuesday, Trump struck a cowed note, insisting that “in no way have we abandoned the Kurds” ahead of a planned Turkish offensive.

Earlier in the day, the White House briefed that it was not an immediate “drawdown” of forces, as Trump had represented it at first, but simply a military “restructuring.”

In a background briefing, a senior administration official told reporters that the shift in strategy was not a withdrawal but that the affected troops — around 50 to 100 special operators — would merely be relocated to other bases in the region.

The announcement by the president that he was effectively giving a green light to a Turkish offensive on Kurdish forces in Syria had come as a shock, not only to the U.S.’s partners but to U.S. servicemen themselves.

On Tuesday, a fuller account emerged of the hours that led to Trump’s abrupt announcement.

Minutes after coming off the phone with Erdogan on Sunday night, Trump declared he was approving Turkey’s long-threatened invasion of Syria. It was a prime example of the onthe-cuff diplomacy he has become known for. A call with Erdogan ended with him announcing on Twitter the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the war-torn country back in December — a decision he was coaxed into reversing.

The Turkish leader has for months been trying to sell the idea of a “safe zone” along his southern border. By the time of last Sunday’s call, Erdogan was seething.

Erdogan told Trump that the U.S. moved too slowly to set up the zone, expressing his anger that the U.S. security bureaucracy was seemingly stalling the zone’s full implementation.

It may have goaded Trump, who notoriously does not like to be thought of as being hamstrung by Pentagon policy-makers.

Donald Trump