The White House announced on Oct. 6 that U.S. troops would pull out of northern Syria and hand over responsibility for captured ISIS members to Turkey.
“The United States Armed Forces will not support or be involved in the operation, and United States forces, having defeated the ISIS territorial ‘caliphate,’ will no longer be in the immediate area,” the White House said in a statement.
Trump issued a statement early on Oct. 7 explaining the reasoning behind the decision.
“The United States was supposed to be in Syria for 30 days, that was many years ago. We stayed and got deeper and deeper into battle with no aim in sight. When I arrived in Washington, ISIS was running rampant in the area. We quickly defeated 100% of the ISIS Caliphate including capturing thousands of ISIS fighters, mostly from Europe,” Trump wrote on Twitter.
He said Europe wouldn’t take back the captured fighters and tried to make the United States take responsibility for them, even if they were nationals of other countries.
“Europe did not want them back, they said you keep them USA! I said ‘NO, we did you a great favor and now you want us to hold them in U.S. prisons at tremendous cost. They are yours for trials.’ They again said ‘NO,’ thinking, as usual, that the U.S. is always the ’sucker,' on NATO, on Trade, on everything,” Trump wrote.
Trump noted that Kurdish fighters fought alongside the United States and that animus exists between the Kurds and Turkey, but said the United States couldn’t hold off any longer.
“I held off this fight for almost 3 years, but it is time for us to get out of these ridiculous Endless Wars, many of them tribal, and bring our soldiers home. WE WILL FIGHT WHERE IT IS TO OUR BENEFIT, AND ONLY FIGHT TO WIN,” Trump said.
“Turkey, Europe, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Russia and the Kurds will now have to figure the situation out, and what they want to do with the captured ISIS fighters in their ‘neighborhood.’ They all hate ISIS, have been enemies for years. We are 7000 miles away and will crush ISIS again if they come anywhere near us!”
