WASHINGTON – In a move that coincides with the United States troop withdrawal from Syria, President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered the that several thousand troops return home from Afghanistan.
It comes as the first stage of a “phased drawdown” and end to a 17-year-old war in the combat-torn Middle East country, the Wall Street Journal first reported, with more than 7,000 U.S. troops starting to return in the coming weeks, about half the forces there.
The report comes just hours after U.S. Secretary of State Jim Mattis handed over his resignation letter to President Trump, largely due to his disagreements over the troop withdraw from Syria and differing views on foreign affairs.
Mattis was also a supporter of the United States continuing their role in bringing training, expertise and defence to Afghanistan, along with stressing the value of Washington’s allies across the international community.
Sen. Lindsay Graham, who is often a Trump policy supporter, condemned the White House order to withdraw from Afghanistan, just as he did on Syria the day before, saying that it could pave the way for a second “9/11”, referencing the jihadist attack in 2001 that killed just short of 3,000 people.
“The conditions in Afghanistan – at the present moment – make American troop withdrawals a high risk strategy,” the Republican politician tweeted, adding that “if we continue on our present course we are setting in motion the loss of all our gains and paving the way toward a second 9/11.”
Graham initially retweeted the news from the Wall Street Journal report were he posted that he had just recently returned from Afghanistan where so-called Islamic State remains very active.
In Syria, there are worries that the United States withdrawal could endanger the U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which were instrumental as a frontline force against IS, or Daesh, across Syria and in Iraq.
“We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency,” U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted Wednesday morning, citing the low numbers of remaining IS fighters in Syria.
Mr. Trump has long wanted to bring U.S. troops home from Syria, a deployment that occurred under former President Barack Obama in 2014, a move the current president had strongly criticized.
The time frame for the U.S. withdrawal is expected to be between 60 to 100 days, a U.S. official told Reuters news agency, and U.S. officials will start leaving the war-torn country over the next 24 hours.
A withdrawal marks a major policy shift from previous U.S. foreign policy in the region. Washington previously said it considered the Syrian deployment important for security.
Pro-Afghan Mattis Departs WH
Trump received a resignation letter from Defence Secretary Jim Mattis, who is for a U.S. deployment in Afghanistan, as well as Syria.
“General Jim Mattis will be retiring, with distinction, at the end of February,” Trump wrote on Twitter Thursday, adding that “during Jim’s tenure, tremendous progress has been made”, specifically with new equipment.
“General Mattis was a great help to me in getting allies and other countries to pay their share of military obligations. A new Secretary of Defense will be named shortly. I greatly thank Jim for his service!”
General Mattis will end his tenure on Feb. 28, 2019, and submitted his resignation of his own accord, though speculation that he may leave started to grow when Trump said Mattis was “sort of a Democrat” in October.
The announcement came a day after President Trump set in motion a U.S. troop withdrawal from Syria, a decision that Mattis and other national security and Middle East advisors were against.
Mattis did praise Trump for his spending on security and securing strong funding for the Defence Department set for next year, and noted that he agreed with Trump that the U.S. should not be the policeman of the world.
However, Mattis appears to differ from Trump on more issues than find agreement in the letter, including his staunch support for maintaining a strong military presence in Afghanistan to defend peace.
The Pentagon declined to comment on Afghanistan, Reuters reported, but a spokesman for the National Security Council said that the White House as not going to comment “on future strategic developments”.
The White House is considering a troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, ordering the Pentagon to draw up plans that will be due shortly after the new year, as the president wants to have options, NBC News reported.
With a government shutdown looming, the national security experts of at apparent odds with the president and special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the Russian election meddling due as early as February, the capitol is in what some analysts have marked as “chaos”.
NBC News exclusively reported on Thursday that Mr. Mueller is expected submit his report into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election as early as mid-February 2019.
(c)Breaking911 – Eli Ridder
