Key senator: Trump taking shift in Syria plan seriously
01 January, 2019
Sen. Lindsey Graham said U.S. President Donald Trump may be open to changing his strategy of pulling U.S. forces out of Syria after an eye-opening trip to Iraq the day after Christmas.
Graham, a South Carolina Republican who sits on the Senate Armed Forces Committee, has been a vocal critic of Trump’s plan to pull forces from the conflict. He said earlier on Sunday that he would try to change the president’s mind during a private lunch because the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant militant group is not completely defeated as the president previously has suggested.
“I feel better about Syria than I felt before I had lunch,” Graham told reporters after leaving the White House. “I think the president is taking this really seriously, and the trip to Iraq was well timed.” Trump has forged a plan with his generals in the field that “makes sense,” Graham added.
On CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday morning, Graham said Trump had talked to Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“I got a call from Gen. Dunford,” Graham said. “The president is reconsidering how we do this.”
Graham said he understood Trump’s frustration with how much allies sacrifice in the Syria conflict, as well as the notion that the United States is trying to secure the entire world.
“But we’re not the policemen of the world here,” he said, adding that the United States is “fighting a war against” ISIL for its own security.
The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on whether Trump is considering reversing the decision, announced by tweet recently, to pull U.S. troops from Syria. That move, which came against the advice of the president’s top national security advisers, triggered the resignation of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.
Trump has already backed away from the notion of an immediate withdrawal, saying a week ago that the pullout of U.S. troops from the area would be “slow & highly coordinated.”
While visiting soldiers in Iraq recently — his first visit to U.S. troops in a combat zone as commander-in-chief — Trump said the forces that remain there could act against any ISIL resurgence in neighboring Syria.
On CNN, Graham said that the United States is “inside the 10-yard line in defeating ISIS [ISIL]. But we’re not there yet. If we leave now, the Kurds are going to get slaughtered.”