Trump says US will leave Syria ‘very soon’
President Donald Trump made a surprise announcement during an infrastructure speech Thursday in Ohio, saying the United States would soon withdraw from Syria.
“By the way, we’re knocking the hell out of ISIS,” Trump said. “We’re coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now. Very soon — very soon we’re coming out.”
We can say a couple of things about this. The first is that you shouldn’t take it to the bank. Trump has a tendency to spitball about very serious matters such as this. At the same event, he suggested he might delay his newly struck South Korea trade deal so he has leverage to deal with North Korea. He also regularly says things will happen which, well, don’t.
But Trump’s proclamation was also notable for one other reason: He telegraphed military strategy.
That is something Trump said repeatedly on the 2016 campaign trail and since that he wouldn’t do as president. He said it would only tip off the enemy.
“Unlike Hillary Clinton, who has risked so many lives with her careless handling of sensitive information, my administration will not telegraph exact military plans to the enemy,” Trump said in his big speech about fighting terrorism in August 2016. “I have often said that General MacArthur and General Patton would be in a state of shock if they were alive today to see the way President Obama and Hillary Clinton try to recklessly announce their every move before it happens - like they did in Iraq — so that the enemy can prepare and adapt.”
He echoed that in an April 2017 interview with “Fox and Friends” while talking about the situation in North Korea.
“I don’t want to telegraph what I’mdoing, or what I’m thinking,” he said. “I’m not like other administrations, where they say we’re going to do this in four weeks and that. It doesn’t work that way.”
Trump has regularly talked about how the Obama administration previewed an attack on Mosul in Iraq for so long that the Islamic State fortified itself for the coming attack. While discussing that and North Korea at a February 2017 news conference, Trump said he would apply a different approach.
Trumpdoes seemto have less concern about telegraphing troop withdrawals, calling for getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan repeatedly on the campaign trail.