OPINION | This article contains opinion. This site is licensed to publish this content.
President Trump took his critics head-on in a tweet early on Sunday morning when he said people who want to keep the United States in the Middle East “haven’t got a clue.”
“The same people that got us into the Middle East Quicksand, 8 Trillion Dollars and many thousands of lives (and millions of lives when you count the other side), are now fighting to keep us there,” Trump tweeted amid calls from both Democrats and Republicans to reverse his decision.
“Don’t listen to people that haven’t got a clue,” the president added. “They have proven to be inept!”
The same people that got us into the Middle East Quicksand, 8 Trillion Dollars and many thousands of lives (and millions of lives when you count the other side), are now fighting to keep us there. Don’t listen to people that haven’t got a clue. They have proven to be inept!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 13, 2019
“These wars, they never end,” Trump added at the Value Voter Summit in Washington D.C. on Saturday night, Breitbart reports. “And we have to bring our great soldiers back from the never-ending wars.”
“We’ve been in these wars now, one of them 19 years, and we don’t fight to win, we fight to just stay there,” he also said.
And:
Trump argued that the contested area in Syria was only about 22 miles of borderland in Turkey, and that the Kurds had been fighting the conflict for years.
“Let them have their borders,” he said, referring to Turkey, “But I don’t think that our soldiers should be there for the next 50 years guarding a border between Turkey and Syria when we can’t guard our own borders at home.”
The crowd applauded Trump’s remarks, especially when he reminded them that the Islamic State was defeated in the Middle East.
“We killed ISIS, we did our job, we have to go home,” he said, as the crowd applauded.
Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg said Trump’s decision has some soldiers feeling like that “lost their honor.”
“If you take away a soldier’s honor, you might as well go after their body armor next. That’s what the Commander-in-Chief is doing,” the South Bend mayor said during CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who routinely supports the president, also criticized Trump’s decision to leave Northern Syria.
Every concern I had about President Trump’s Syria decision is coming true in spades.
➡️ The reemergence of ISIS is on the way. And if you think only Europe is threatened — you are sadly mistaken.
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) October 11, 2019
Could not agree with Prime Minister @netanyahu more.
Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria attacking one of America’s most reliable allies – the Kurds — is a nightmare for the US and Israel. https://t.co/CGPW8SLEQ0
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) October 10, 2019
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on Sen. Lindsey Graham's criticism of the Trump administration's Syria strategy: "I like Lindsey Graham a lot. I respect Lindsey. Lindsey and the president are close. This is obviously an issue that they don't agree on" https://t.co/iQmxNzRMwN pic.twitter.com/E8RyNMdomr
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) October 13, 2019
[sg_popup id=573204]
