Trump Informs Media, U.S. Is Not a Police Force for Southwest Asia

Oct. 9, 2019 (EIRNS)—President Donald Trump responded to media questions at the White House regarding his Oct. 7 decision to pull U.S. troops back from Syria’s border with Turkey, and elaborated his intention to get the U.S. out of the endless wars bequeathed to him by his predecessors. “I don’t want to stay there for the next 40 years,” Trump told them. “It’s not going to do anything. ... I campaigned on the fact that I was going to bring our soldiers home, and bring them home as rapidly as possible.” Part of keeping that promise, Trump said, is not thrusting U.S. forces into even more conflicts that have no end in sight, reported Military Times. “We interject ourselves into wars, and we interject ourselves into tribal wars and revolutions and all of these things that are very—they’re not the kind of thing that you settle the way we’d like to see it settled. It just doesn’t work that way. ... And it’s time to come back home.” The President said one of the things he hates the most, “I have to sign letters often to parents of young soldiers that were killed.  And it’s the hardest thing I have to do in this job. I hate it,” repeating, “I hate it.”

When asked about the hostile response of the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to the U.S. decision, Trump replied that he can understand their side of it. “But if you go by the other side, that means we should never, ever come home.... We’re willing to do what we have to do, but there has to be an end-game. And if you stay, it’s going to be the same thing,” he said. “We’re not a police force,” Military Times quoted him as saying.

In a lengthy tweet, Oct. 7, widely cut by the media and misquoted, the President wrote:

“The United States was supposed to be in Syria for 30 days, that was many years ago. We stayed and got deeper and deeper into battle with no aim in sight. When I arrived in Washington, ISIS was running rampant in the area. We quickly defeated 100% of the ISIS Caliphate, including capturing thousands of ISIS fighters, mostly from Europe. But Europe did not want them back, they said you keep them USA! I said ‘NO, we did you a great favor and now you want us to hold them in U.S. prisons at tremendous cost. They are yours for trials.’ They again said ‘NO,’ thinking, as usual, that the U.S. is always the ‘sucker,’ on NATO, on Trade, on everything. The Kurds fought with us, but were paid massive amounts of money and equipment to do so. They have been fighting Turkey for decades. I held off this fight for almost 3 years, but it is time for us to get out of these ridiculous Endless Wars, many of them tribal, and bring our soldiers home. WE WILL FIGHT WHERE IT IS TO OUR BENEFIT, AND ONLY FIGHT TO WIN. Turkey, Europe, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Russia and the Kurds will now have to figure the situation out, and what they want to do with the captured ISIS fighters in their ‘neighborhood.’ They all hate ISIS, have been enemies for years. We are 7000 miles away and will crush ISIS again if they come anywhere near us!”