Mike Pompeo’s laughable defense of Syria withdrawal inspires fierce backlash: ‘Building foreign mobster ties is not a coalition’

As President Donald Trump continues to face widespread criticism over his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from northeastern Syria and abandon the United States’ Kurdish allies, others in his administration find themselves defending the withdrawal — including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is being lambasted after posting a tweet that tried to put a positive spin on things.

The news coming out of northeastern Syria this week following the withdrawal is dismal. With an incursion of Turkish troops, the Kurdish forces who has been helping the U.S. are turning to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad out of desperation — and there are reports of captured ISIS fighters escaping in the chaos.

On Tuesday, the U.S. State Department tweeted an interview in which Pompeo told Nashville’s WZTV-TV that the U.S. was “leading from the front” to “build out coalitions that can effectively deal with some of the most difficult challenges facing the world today.” And it wasn’t long before Twitter was full of angry responses to that tweet.

View the complete October 15 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.