Smoothly running White House

In April, President Trump repeated his campaign promise to end U.S. military involvement in Syria. “I want to get out,” he said. “I want to bring our troops back home.”

In September, senior administration aides said at the time, the president was persuaded to change course. Some 2,000 U.S. troops would stay in Syria indefinitely, not only until the Islamic State was defeated, but also until a political solution to the overall Syria conflict was in place and, in a key part of Trump’s newly announced Iran policy, all Iranian forces and their proxies aiding Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had left the country.

On Wednesday, Trump set heads spinning within his own government and around the world by apparently reversing himself again. His decision was made on Tuesday, according to people familiar with the issue, following a small meeting attended only by senior White House aides and the secretaries of defense and state, most of whom, if not all, sharply disagreed.

[...]

In just the past week, senior officials — including the administration’s special envoys to Syria and the counter-Islamic State coalition — had said that defeating the last organized Islamic State pockets, in southern Syria near the Iraqi border, could be months away and that thousands of militants remained underground throughout Syria, waiting to reemerge.

The officials reiterated that the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurdish-dominated group of U.S.-trained and -equipped ground fighters, remained valued American allies who would not be deserted.

  WaPo

Yeah, well, it's not like we haven't made and broken that promise to foreign fighters before. And the whole world knows it, so, hey, buyer beware when you make a deal with this "ally".

The only potential upset in recent days was a threat by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — who spoke with Trump at the Group of 20 summit three weeks ago and again on the telephone Friday — to send troops across the border to attack the U.S.-allied Kurdish forces in northeast Syria.

Officials familiar with the Friday call said that Erdogan, among other things, had stressed to Trump that the Syrian Kurds were terrorists — allied with Kurdish separatists in his own country — and asked why the United States was supporting them rather than its NATO ally. He noted that the Islamic State had been vanquished and questioned the need for an ongoing U.S. troop presence, saying that Turkish troops already massed on the Syrian border could handle any problem there.

[...]

Jonathan Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, noted that the Syria decision also coincided with the administration’s notification to Congress late Tuesday that Turkey’s long-sought purchase of U.S.-produced Patriot missile defense batteries had been approved after a years-long battle over the terms of a deal between Ankara and Washington.

“It would be disturbing if a strategic gesture was made for commercial reasons,” Alterman said.

Dear God, Jonathan. You weren't born yesterday.

A senior administration official, made available to brief reporters on the Syria decision Tuesday, mentioned only Turkey among U.S. allies that Trump had informed of the decision in advance. “He informed President Erdogan as a neighbor of Syria,” the official said.

Sounds more like Erdoğan informed him.

Trump himself made no public appearances, canceling a scheduled meeting with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.). Instead, he communicated via Twitter, where he posted a late-afternoon video of himself standing outside the Oval Office, saying that “it’s time for our U.S. troops to come home.” Fallen American warriors, he said, pointing at the sky, were “looking down” in approval.

[...]

A number of close U.S. allies, who are members of the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State, said they were not consulted and were given no prior warning. One European defense secretary put in a call Tuesday to Jim Mattis after hearing rumors of the decision and received a late-night call back from the defense secretary with confirmation. Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did not participate in the meeting with Trump and was in the dark until after it took place, according to several people familiar with the situation.

Mercy Corps, the international aid organization that provides aid to about half the 2.7 million civilian population in U.S.-controlled eastern Syria, said it would probably have to reconsider its operations there.

“We’re not getting assistance in terms of logistics and safety,” country director Arnaud Quemin said in a telephone interview. “It’s just that the presence of the coalition in that part of the country . . . keeps the area calm,” adding that that presence allows organizations like his to “function without interference.”

C'est la vie.