TRUMP: ARGUE IT OUT
WASHINGTON/ANKARA - US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he did not mind Russia helping Syria in a conflict with NATO ally Turkey and rejected criticism of his withdrawal of US troops from Syria that exposed Kurdish allies, calling it “strategically brilliant”.
In a day of fast-moving events, Mr Trump endured harsh criticism for the withdrawal and lashed out at US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, calling her a “third-rate” politician during a tense White House meeting after which she accused him of having a “meltdown”.
Mr Trump’s decision to withdraw US forces before a Turkish offensive into northern Syria last week has shattered the relative calm there and he has been accused of abandoning Kurdish militia who helped the US fight Islamic State militants in the region.
The hasty troop exit has created a land rush between Turkey and Russia — now the undisputed foreign powers in the area - to partition the formerly US-protected Kurdish area. It has allowed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to redeploy his forces to an area that had been beyond his control for years in the more than eight-year Syrian war.
Syrian troops accompanied by Russian forces entered the city of Kobani, a strategically important border city and a potential flashpoint for a wider conflict, the UKbased Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the Syrian war, reported.
Speaking to reporters as he met Italian President Sergio Mattarella and then at a joint news conference, Mr Trump said the Kurds were “not angels” and that it might be necessary for Russianbacked Syria and Turkey to “fight it out.”
“Our soldiers are not in harm’s
way — as they shouldn’t be, as two countries fight over land that has nothing to do with us,” Mr Trump said during Oval Office talks with Mr Mattarella where he sounded as if he were washing his hands of the conflict.
He also defended his move to get US troops out as part of his wider effort to bring Americans home from “endless wars,” despite being excoriated by members of his own Republican Party. US officials say, however, that those troops were expected to be repositioned in the region. Some of them could go to Iraq.
“I viewed the situation on the Turkish border with Syria to be for the United States strategically brilliant,” Mr Trump said.
“Syria may have some help with Russia, and that’s fine. It’s a lot of sand,” he later said. “So you have Syria and you have Turkey. They’re going to argue it out, maybe they’re going to fight it out. But our men aren’t going to get killed over it.”
Acting last week after a phone call on October 6 with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, Mr Trump abruptly upended five years of US policy with his decision to withhold protection from Syria’s Kurds and to withdraw first about 50 special operations forces and then the roughly 1000 US troops in northern Syria.
“This is a mistake worse than what (Barack) Obama did” when the former president withdrew US troops from Iraq in 2011, Republican US Senator Lindsay Graham, usually among Mr Trump’s strongest supporters, told reporters.
The White House, fighting the domestic political damage and perhaps trying to demonstrate the president’s efforts to stop Turkey’s onslaught, released an October 9 Trump letter to Mr Erdogan that said: “Don’t be a tough guy” and “Don’t be a fool!”