The Republican chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Sunday torched the Trump administration’s plans for a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, saying the exodus of American soldiers from the region would be “tragic” and “unconscionable.”
“ISIS was able to rise from the thoroughly defeated ashes of al-Qaida in Iraq, and I don’t want to be making the same statement six months from now that we bugged out of Syria unwisely and that ISIS has re-emerged from the defeated ashes of ISIS in Syria,” Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin told host Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.”
“I think it would just be tragic if we bugged out, left the Kurds who, by and large, have done the fighting and have defeated the ISIS caliphate, the territorial caliphate and ISIS, if we just abandoned them to the mercies — and I use that term loosely — of Russia and Iran and, possibly, Turkey,” Johnson said. “It would just be unconscionable.”
View the complete February 3 article by Quint Forgey on the Politico website here.