The Heritage Foundation’s Jim Carafano said on “America’s Newsroom” Friday that President Donald Trump’s biggest mistake with Syria was the way he announced the withdrawal.
“I was never one that said we need a permanent footprint in Syria,” Carafano said. (RELATED: Trump Explains His Decision To Withdraw From Syria)
“It didn’t make sense to stay there forever because there was no strategic gain for that. But it’s how we adjust the footprint that it doesn’t leave space to make things worse in the region that’s important. And as long as the administration can accommodate that, then that’s fine. I think really the fault lies with the president and how he rolled this out. He created for himself more problems than he needed to.”
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Carafano claimed the Kurds would survive a U.S. troop withdrawal but said America should still do its part to prevent a “large-scale humanitarian” disaster in the future.
“I don’t think anybody’s going to wipe out the Kurds,” he declared. “As the United States leaves, they have to make sure that there’s not another large-scale humanitarian catastrophe. Look, I don’t think the Turks are with us on everything and I don’t trust the Turks as far as I can throw them. But I don’t think it’s necessarily true that the U.S. and Turkish interests in Syria can’t be reconciled.”
Carafano also said if Trump had given a speech similar to the one he gave about Afghanistan, he could have created more goodwill with voters and would have public opinion on his side.
“I think it he’d made a speech like did he last year when he talked about the Afghan policy and laid out to the American people what the American interests are and what the plan was — not the details. We don’t want to give stuff away to the enemy, but explaining to people what we’re doing rather than just tweeting. I think if he had done that, I think he would have resolved a lot of the issues that he has created for himself,” Carafano concluded.
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