President Donald Trump said he has no plans to withdraw American forces from Iraq, a week after announcing a surprise pullout of troops from Syria and ordering the Pentagon to bring home roughly half of the American forces deployed to Afghanistan.
President Donald Trump said he has no plans to withdraw American forces from Iraq, a week after announcing a surprise pullout of troops from Syria and ordering the Pentagon to bring home roughly half of the American forces deployed to Afghanistan.
The decision allows the United States to maintain a presence in the heart of the Middle East and a bulwark against Iranian influence, while also keeping a nearby staging ground should American troops be forced to reenter Syria and engage a resurgent Islamic State.
A longer-term presence in Iraq provides Trump with a hedge against his withdrawal from Syria, a decision that was widely opposed by his advisers and which led to the resignation of his defense secretary, retired Marine Corps Gen. Jim Mattis.
The development also suggests that Trump’s proclamation of victory over the Islamic State in a video message from the White House lawn last week had been overstated. Trump said during a visit to Iraq on Wednesday that a presence in the country would enable the United States to re-enter Syria if need be, suggesting that concerns persist about the possibility of the Islamic State regrouping there.
« In fact, we could use this as the base if we wanted to do something in Syria, » Trump said during Wednesday’s unannounced visit to al-Asad Air Base in western Iraq, between Baghdad and the Syrian border.
He was accompanied by first lady Melania Trump. Trump traveled with a small group of journalists, who were ordered for security reasons not to report that he was in Iraq until he had finished delivering his remarks to the troops, roughly three hours into his visit to the base. Air Force One landed at Joint Base Andrews, Md., at 5:12 a.m. EST, The Associated Press reported.
The decision to remain in Iraq also highlighted a contradiction in Trump’s messaging about the broader U. S. military presence in the Middle East. He said last week that U. S. troops would be coming out of Syria because victory had been achieved over the Islamic State. But the mission of the roughly 5,200 U. S.
