Washing his hands of Syria, US President Donald Trump on Wednesday said that the US has no stake in defending the Kurdish fighters who died by the thousands as Washington’s partners against the Islamic State group.
Hours later, US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats walked out of a meeting at the White House, accusing him of having a “meltdown,” calling her a “third-grade politician,” and having no plan to deal with a potentially revived Islamic State group.
Condemnation of Trump’s stance on Turkey, Syria and the Kurds was quick and severe during the day, not only from Democrats, but from Republicans who have been his staunch supporters on virtually all issues.
The House, bitterly divided over the Trump impeachment inquiry, banded together for an overwhelming 354 to 60 denunciation of the US troop withdrawal.
Many lawmakers expressed worry that it could lead to revival of the Islamic State group, as well as Russian presence and influence in the area — in addition to the slaughter of many Kurds.
At the White House, Trump said that the US has no business in the region — and not to worry about the Kurdish fighters.
“They know how to fight, and by the way, they’re no angels,” Trump told reporters.
After the House vote, congressional leaders of both parties went to the White house for a briefing, which grew contentious, with Trump and Pelosi trading jabs.
The Democrats said they walked out when the meeting devolved into the trading of insults.
“What we witnessed on the part of the president was a meltdown,” Pelosi told reporters, saying that Trump appeared visibly “shaken up” over the House vote.
“We couldn’t continue in the meeting because he was just not relating to the reality of it,” she said.
US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer criticized Trump for not having an adequate plan to deal with Islamic State fighters who have been held by the Kurds.
He said the meeting “was not a dialogue, this was sort of a diatribe, a nasty diatribe not focused on the facts.”
Republicans pushed back, saying it was Pelosi who had been the problem.
“She storms out of another meeting, trying to make it unproductive,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said.
White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham called Pelosi’s action “baffling, but not surprising.”
She said the speaker “had no intention of listening or contributing to an important meeting on national security issues.”
Trump himself has stalked out of his White House meetings with congressional leaders — in May, saying he would no longer work with Democrats unless they dropped all Russia investigations, and last January during the partial US government shutdown.
Separately on Wednesday, a letter was disclosed in which he both cajoled and threatened Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last week, urging him to act only in “the right and humane way” in Syria.
He started on a positive note, suggesting they could “work out a good deal,” but then talked about crippling economic sanctions and concluded that the world “will look upon you forever as the devil if good things don’t happen. Don’t be a tough guy. Don’t be a fool!”
In public appearances on Wednesday, Trump said that he was fulfilling a campaign promise to bring US troops home from “endless wars” in the Middle East — casting aside criticism that a sudden US withdrawal from Syria betrayed the Kurdish fighters, stained US credibility around the world and opened an important region to Russia, which is moving in.
“We have a situation where Turkey is taking land from Syria. Syria’s not happy about it. Let them work it out,” Trump said. “They have a problem at a border. It’s not our border. We shouldn’t be losing lives over it.”
Trump said that he was sending US Vice President Mike Pence and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Ankara to urge the Turks to halt their week-long offensive into northeastern Syria, but his remarks, first to reporters in the Oval Office and later at a news conference with Italian President Sergio Mattarella, suggested he sees little at stake for the US.
“Syria may have some help with Russia, and that’s fine,” Trump said. “They’ve got a lot of sand over there. So, there’s a lot of sand that they can play with. Let them fight their own wars.”
More than once, Trump suggested that the US has little concern in the Middle East because it is geographically distant — a notion shared by some prior to Sept. 11, 2001, when militants used Afghanistan as a base from which to attack the US.
That attack set off a series of armed conflicts, including in Iraq, that Trump considers a waste of US lives and money.
The Syria withdrawal is the worst decision of Trump’s presidency, said US Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican who meets often with the president, and is one of his strongest and most important supporters in the US Congress.
“To those who think the Mideast doesn’t matter to America, remember 9/11 — we had that same attitude on 9/10/2001,” he said.
US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that he strongly disagreed with Trump and had told the president so.
Turkish troops and Turkish-backed Syrian fighters launched their offensive against Kurdish forces in northern Syria a week ago, two days after Trump suddenly announced he was withdrawing the US from the area.
Erdogan has said that he wants to create a 30km “safe zone” in Syria.
Ankara has long argued that the Kurdish fighters are nothing more than an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party, which has waged a guerrilla campaign inside Turkey since the 1980s, and which Turkey, as well as the US and EU, designate a terrorist organization.
Trump downplayed the crisis that followed his decision to pull out of Syria, which critics say amounted to giving Turkey a green light to invade.
“It’s not between Turkey and the United States, like a lot of stupid people would like you to believe,” Trump said. “Our soldiers are not in harm’s way, as they shouldn’t be.”
Trump did impose new sanctions on Turkey this week in an attempt to force Erdogan to end his assault, but he said on Wednesday: “It’s time for us to come home.”
Even as Trump defended his removal of US troops from Syria, he praised his decision to send more troops and military equipment to Saudi Arabia to help the kingdom defend itself against Iran.
The US is sending missiles and “great power” to the Saudi Arabians, and “they’re paying for that,” Trump said.
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