Orangutan meets Putty at G20, Orangutan pulls troops... Treason????

Trump defends surprise Syria withdrawal despite withering GOP criticism

By CAITLIN OPRYSKO

President Donald Trump on Thursday defended his abrupt decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria amid a torrent of bipartisan criticism, arguing in a series of early morning tweets that the move should come as “no surprise."

The president also backed away from earlier claims that the Islamic State had been defeated in Syria, warning that the U.S. risked becoming the "policeman of the Middle East."

“Getting out of Syria was no surprise. I’ve been campaigning on it for years, and six months ago, when I very publicly wanted to do it, I agreed to stay longer,” Trump wrote in one tweet. “Russia, Iran, Syria & others are the local enemy of ISIS. We were doing there [sic] work. Time to come home & rebuild. #MAGA”

The president's assertion that battling Islamic State militants should be the responsibility of nations in that region marked a shift from his rhetoric a day earlier, when Trump suggested that U.S. forces had "defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.”

The sudden announcement that the U.S. would withdraw its forces in Syria sent allies scrambling and prompted some in the U.S. to wonder whether the move was an attempt to divert attention from Trump’s backing down from threats to shut down parts of the federal government over funding for his long-promised border wall.

Although the president claimed Thursday that his decision to pull U.S. troops from Syria should come as "no surprise," several of his administration's top national security officials appeared to be caught off-guard by the move. Congressional Republicans, including some close allies of the president, panned the notion that the Islamic State had been defeated.

Some in the GOP compared the White House’s announcement to former President Barack Obama's decision to dramatically scale back the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, a move many have blamed for creating the vacuum that allowed the Islamic State to flourish in the first place.

Still, despite protests from within his own party, Trump insisted Thursday morning that the withdrawal from Syria would keep the U.S. from becoming mired in another long-term conflict in the Middle East. The president has long expressed skepticism of long-term U.S. military engagements in foreign countries, a position that dates back to his presidential campaign and has at times put him at odds with members of his national security team and the more hawkish members of his own party.

“Does the USA want to be the Policeman of the Middle East, getting NOTHING but spending precious lives and trillions of dollars protecting others who, in almost all cases, do not appreciate what we are doing?” Trump asked in another tweet. “Do we want to be there forever? Time for others to finally fight.”

The president spent Wednesday and early Thursday morning tweeting out the messages of those who have spoken in support of his announcement, including GOP Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), who have long opposed the U.S. presence in Syria.

Critics of all political stripes slammed the announcement as a victory for the dictatorial regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, as well as for Russia and Iran, who have backed Assad’s forces in the ongoing civil war there. But Trump on Thursday called that line of thinking “fake news” even though Russian President Vladimir Putin himself applauded news of the impending withdrawal.

“Russia, Iran, Syria & many others are not happy about the U.S. leaving,” Trump wrote, reasoning that “now they will have to fight ISIS and others, who they hate, without us. I am building by far the most powerful military in the world. ISIS hits us they are doomed!”